How to fix 'sh: tsc not found' error in docker container when using Gitlab CI docker-in-docker

Question

I'm setting up Gitlab CI docker-in-docker for a project. Unfortunately the job keeps failing because installed NPM packages can't seem to be found when running commands. The error I'm getting:

backend_1   | 
backend_1   | > [email protected] build /app
backend_1   | > tsc
backend_1   | 
backend_1   | sh: tsc: not found
backend_1   | npm ERR! file sh
backend_1   | npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
backend_1   | npm ERR! errno ENOENT
backend_1   | npm ERR! syscall spawn
backend_1   | npm ERR! [email protected] build: `tsc`
backend_1   | npm ERR! spawn ENOENT
backend_1   | npm ERR! 
backend_1   | npm ERR! Failed at the [email protected] build script.
backend_1   | npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.
backend_1   | 
backend_1   | npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
backend_1   | npm ERR!     /root/.npm/_logs/2019-08-02T04_46_04_881Z-debug.log

The curious thing is that it does work when I run docker-compose manually without using the Gitlab CI. This is what my .gitlab-ci.yml looks like:

build:
  variables:
    DOCKER_HOST: tcp://docker:2375/
    DOCKER_DRIVER: overlay2
    DOCKER_TLS_CERTDIR: ""
  image: docker:18
  stage: build
  services:
    - docker:18-dind
  before_script:
    - docker info
    - apk add python-dev libffi-dev openssl-dev gcc libc-dev make
    - apk add py-pip
    - pip install docker-compose
  script:
    - docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml up

This is my docker-compose.yml:

version: '3'
services:
  frontend:
    build:
      context: ./frontend
      args:
        NODE_ENV: production
        PGUSER: ${PGUSER}
        PGHOST: ${PGHOST}
        PGPASSWORD: ${PGPASSWORD}
        PGDATABASE: ${PGDATABASE}
        PGPORT: ${PGPORT}
        DATABASE_URL: ${DATABASE_URL}
    command: npm run build
    ports:
      - "9000:9000"
    volumes:
      - /app/node_modules
      - ./frontend:/app
  backend:
    build:
      context: ./backend
      args:
        NODE_ENV: production
    command: npm run build
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    volumes:
      - /app/node_modules
      - ./backend:/app

And this is the Dockerfile:

FROM node:11.10.1-alpine
ARG NODE_ENV
ARG PGUSER
ARG PGHOST
ARG PGPASSWORD
ARG PGDATABASE
ARG PGPORT
ARG DATABASE_URL
ENV NODE_ENV ${NODE_ENV}
ENV PGUSER ${PGUSER}
ENV PGHOST ${PGHOST}
ENV PGPASSWORD ${PGPASSWORD}
ENV PGDATABASE ${PGDATABASE}
ENV PGPORT ${PGPORT}
ENV DATABASE_URL ${DATABASE_URL}
WORKDIR '/app'
COPY ./package.json ./
RUN npm install
COPY ./ ./

I expect the installed packages and their commands to be available in the docker container. At some point they worked, and I have no clue what changed in the configuration to cause this issue.

I am not expecting a copy/paste solution from you guys, but I do hope you can point me in the right direction to properly get to the root of this issue.

Answer 1

The problem was that I switched from NODE_ENV: development to NODE_ENV: production. With production enabled devDependencies in my package.json were no longer being installed (duh me).

I added typescript and webpack to the regular dependencies and now it works like a charm again.