npmserve-server

This server provides npm as a service accessible via http endpoints. This allows virtual machines and other slow clients to offload the work of building node_modules and thus perform significantly faster installs.

disclaimer

npmserve and npmserve-server are experimental projects. These tools should not be used for deploying production dependencies. The client/server model does not yet have authentication or authorization in place. This project also does not guarantee the integrity or security of dependencies installed from npm or distributed to clients. Please consider your own requirements and constraints before incorporating npmserve into your workflow.

clients

1. command-line client: available at npmserve.

2. web interface: the server provides a web interface to delete and trigger builds:

implementation

To solve these problems, we are providing a server on which clients can execute their npm installs by uploading a package.json file. In response, they will receive a node_modules.tar.gz archive containing their install results.

limitations

Currently, the server must be run on a machine with the same architecture as the clients. If this is not the case, calls to /npm/install may return node_modules archives containing extensions compiled for the wrong architecture.

build semantics

To the extent possible, the npmserve server provides operations analogous to those that a user running npm locally might do. Users running locally often resort to forceful actions such as deleting their entire node_modules directory or clearing their cache. We provide the facility to perform those actions via the API as well. These are documented below.

API

POST /npm/install

• behavior: performs an npm install on the server
• arguments: packageJson: string of package.json file contents
• content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8
• response: compressed archive node_modules.tar.gz, containing node_modules

DELETE /npm/install/:hash

• behavior: deletes the node_modules build on the server for the specified build hash
• arguments: none
• response: void

POST /npm/cache/clean

• behavior: clears the .npm cache on the server
• arguments: none
• response: void

environment

This project relies on the following environment variables:

| name | type | default | description | | ---- | ---- | ------- | ----------- | | BUILD_DATA_DIR | string | ./data | path to the directory in which to store build data | | NPM_CONFIG_REGISTRY | string | https://registry.npmjs.org | the npm registry to use for npm install |