`npm build` doesn't run the script named "build" in package.json

Question

Unfortunately npm build is already an internal command, as described in the docs:

This is the plumbing command called by npm link and npm install. It should generally not be called directly.

Because that command already exists, it always shadows over your "build": "node build.js".

The fully-qualified way to run your own script is with run-script or its alias run:

$ npm run build

npm start and others are the short-hand way, but is only an option when an existing npm command doesn't shadow it, like npm build does.

---

For posterity (as others have mentioned) npm build is used by npm to build native C/C++ Node addons using node-gyp.

The script named as "build" in package.json is not special in any way. The only way to get it to run is to call:

npm run-script build

There are some names which are called automatically by npm, but "build" is not one of them. The full list is:

• prepublish, publish, postpublish
• preinstall, install, postinstall
• preuninstall, uninstall, postuninstall
• preversion, version, postversion
• pretest, test, posttest
• prestop, stop, poststop
• prestart, start, poststart
• prerestart, restart, postrestart
• preCUSTOM and postCUSTOM for custom script names.

OK, to run a build on it's own, use:

npm run-script build

Npm build expects

A folder containing a package.json file in its root

Try using npm scripts in your package.json, like the classic npm start

I had a problem with npm run build not printing anything. ended up using npm run build --verbose to get the output I needed.