Firebase Functions local "file:" dependencies

Question

I'm using a react-crud-shared as dependency for react-crud-backend which uses Firebase Cloud Functions.

At react-crud-backend I have the following:

{
  "name": "react-crud-backend",
  "description": "Cloud Functions for Firebase",
  "scripts": {
    ...
  },
  "dependencies": {
    ...
    "react-crud-shared": "file:../shared",
    ...
  },
  "engines": {
    "node": "8"
  },
  "private": true,
  "devDependencies": {
    ...
  }
}

At react-crud-shared I have the following:

{
  "name": "react-crud-shared",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "description": "",
  "main": "src/index.js",
  "private": true,
  "dependencies": {
    "lodash": "^4.17.11"
  }
}

It works fine on development: "firebase serve --only functions", but an error is thrown on deployment:

Did you list all required modules in the package.json dependencies?
Detailed stack trace: Error: Cannot find module 'react-crud-shared'

Is there a way to make it work without having to publish the private repository to NPM?

Thanks

Answer 1

EDIT: I found a solution for this that I like much better. I commented on this github issue here: https://github.com/firebase/firebase-tools/issues/968#issuecomment-460323113 . Basically, I have a preinstall script the runs npm pack to copy over the package under the functions directory before I use firebase deploy.

FWIW I have the exact same problem. Not exactly sure how I'm going to solve it, but this information from the doc was helpful (https://firebase.google.com/docs/functions/handle-dependencies):

To specify a dependency for your function, add it to your package.json file. If you are deploying through the gcloud command-line tool, you can also pre-install dependencies and deploy them alongside your function. By default, the node_modules folder is added to your .gcloudignore file and is not uploaded as part of your deployment. To deploy pre-installed dependencies, remove node_modules/ from the .gcloudignore file before deploying your function.

Note: Deploying pre-installed dependencies works with gcloud only; the Firebase CLI ignores the local node_modules folder.

Thus, it appears you could first run "npm install" locally, and then use gcloud for deployment, as it would copy up your node_modules directory, which would have your peer dependency in it.

Really kind of stinks, though, that I would have to switch to gcloud from firebase CLI for deployment. Ugh.

Answer 2

node_modules are (ordinary) being ignored for the deployment;

one can still deploy private modules with a directory structure like that:

functions/
  index.js
  package.json
  react-crud-shared/
    package.json

and a package.json alike that:

{
  "dependencies": {
    ...
    "react-crud-shared": "file:./react-crud-shared"
  }
}

---

another method would be to blank the ignores:

{
  "functions": {
    "ignore": []
  }
}

just think the first one is better, because this would push the whole local node_modules directory.

---

beside these workaround methods ...

one can install internally published modules from Cloud Source Repositories, via git+https://.

Answer 3

If the goal is to only share module between web and function, you may simple put the shared package under functions as file:react-crud-shared and then reference the package from web using file:../functions/react-crud-shared.

functions/
  package.json
  ...
  react-crud-shared/
    package.json
    ...
web/
  package.json
  ...

in functions/package.json

{
  "dependencies": {
    ...
    "react-crud-shared": "file:react-crud-shared"
  }
}

in web/package.json

{
  "dependencies": {
    ...
    "react-crud-shared": "file:../functions/react-crud-shared"
  }
}

It works perfectly fine for my case since I use shared protobufjs for cleaner typescript.