nodenpm

Usecase

When you just have node javascript file you want to deploy on machines but do not want to have to manually install the npm dependencies. This program looks for npm dependencies inside the script and installs them and adds them to the node module path on the fly.

This means thay you can just write your script and email it to your friend and she can launch it without having to care about any dependencies.

Scope of this tool

This is a prototype of functionality that i would like to see built in to node. It is inspired by the Groovy languages grape functionality. I do not aim to develop this tool further than this. So its up to someone else to continue or do a proper integration in to node or as an option for the npm tool.

Overview

A node wrapper that downloads dependencies specified in the supplied script. It looks in command line args for a .js file. It parses the .js file and tries to collect all packages that are specified in the .js file.

//npm: [email protected]

The package format follows the npm commandline package naming format. Multiple packages can be specified with spaces inbetween and they are sent to the npm tool before node is called. It is also possible to have multiple //npm: lines in your script. The packages are installed in the users home directory $HOME/.nodenpm/node_modules.

When the packages are installed all commandline arguments are passed on to the node commandline utility.

Example:

#!/usr/bin/env nodenpm

//npm: [email protected]

var colors = require('colors');
console.log("Hello, World!".green);

Installing

For global install

$ sudo npm install nodenpm -g

Running

$ nodenpm mynodescript.js

The commandline arguments are passed through to node unmodified.

NOTES

NOTE!: This is a prototype

NOTE!: Tested on OSX and Linux

NOTE!: Tested on node v0.12.2 . Does not work on v0.10.x