NPM global install "cannot find module"

Question

I wrote a module which I published to npm a moment ago (https://npmjs.org/package/wisp)

So it installs fine from the command line:

$ npm i -g wisp

However, when I run it from the command line, I keep getting an error that optimist isn't installed:

$ wisp  Error: Cannot find module 'optimist'     at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:338:15)     at Function.Module._load (module.js:280:25)     at Module.require (module.js:362:17)     at require (module.js:378:17)     at Object.<anonymous> (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/wisp/wisp:12:10)     at Object.<anonymous> (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/wisp/wisp:96:4)     at Module._compile (module.js:449:26)     at Object.exports.run (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/coffee-script/lib/coffee-script/coffee-script.js:68:25)     at compileScript (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/coffee-script/lib/coffee-script/command.js:135:29)     at fs.stat.notSources.(anonymous function) (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/coffee-script/lib/coffee-script/command.js:110:18) 

However, I have specified in package.json as a dependancy:

{   "name": "wisp",   "author": "Brendan Scarvell <[email protected]>",   "version": "0.1.0",   "description": "Global nodejs file server",   "dependencies": {     "optimist": "~0.3.4"   },   "repository": "git://github.com/tehlulz/wisp",   "bin": {     "wisp" : "./wisp"   } } 

Does anyone know what to do to get this running? I know its to do with the bin part adding the executable to bin and the node_modules in that directory being empty. No idea how to resolve this.

Answer 1

For anyone else running into this, I had this problem due to my npm installing into a location that's not on my NODE_PATH.

[root@uberneek ~]# which npm /opt/bin/npm [root@uberneek ~]# which node /opt/bin/node [root@uberneek ~]# echo $NODE_PATH 

My NODE_PATH was empty, and running npm install --global --verbose promised-io showed that it was installing into /opt/lib/node_modules/promised-io:

[root@uberneek ~]# npm install --global --verbose promised-io npm info it worked if it ends with ok npm verb cli [ '/opt/bin/node', npm verb cli   '/opt/bin/npm', npm verb cli   'install', npm verb cli   '--global', npm verb cli   '--verbose', npm verb cli   'promised-io' ] npm info using [email protected] npm info using [email protected] [cut] npm info build /opt/lib/node_modules/promised-io npm verb from cache /opt/lib/node_modules/promised-io/package.json npm verb linkStuff [ true, '/opt/lib/node_modules', true, '/opt/lib/node_modules' ] [cut] 

My script fails on require('promised-io/promise'):

[neek@uberneek project]$ node buildscripts/stringsmerge.js   module.js:340     throw err;           ^ Error: Cannot find module 'promised-io/promise'     at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:338:15) 

I probably installed node and npm from source using configure --prefix=/opt. I've no idea why this has made them incapable of finding installed modules. The fix for now is to point NODE_PATH at the right directory:

export NODE_PATH=/opt/lib/node_modules 

My require('promised-io/promise') now succeeds.