Running babel-cli from npm script not working

Question

I followed the directions here to install babel-cli. I added "build": "babel src -d lib" to my package.json in the directory I want to run it in. However, on running, I get this error:

🐕  npm run build

> [email protected] build /Users/richard/src/ipfs-readme-standard
> babel src -d lib

src doesn't exist

npm ERR! Darwin 14.5.0
npm ERR! argv "/Users/richard/.nvm/versions/node/v5.0.0/bin/node" "/Users/richard/.nvm/versions/node/v5.0.0/bin/npm" "run" "build"
npm ERR! node v5.0.0
npm ERR! npm  v3.5.2
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! [email protected] build: `babel src -d lib`
npm ERR! Exit status 2
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Failed at the [email protected] build script 'babel src -d lib'.
npm ERR! Make sure you have the latest version of node.js and npm installed.
npm ERR! If you do, this is most likely a problem with the ipfs-readme-standard package,
npm ERR! not with npm itself.
npm ERR! Tell the author that this fails on your system:
npm ERR!     babel src -d lib
npm ERR! You can get information on how to open an issue for this project with:
npm ERR!     npm bugs ipfs-readme-standard
npm ERR! Or if that isn't available, you can get their info via:
npm ERR!     npm owner ls ipfs-readme-standard
npm ERR! There is likely additional logging output above.

npm ERR! Please include the following file with any support request:
npm ERR!     /Users/richard/src/ipfs-readme-standard/npm-debug.log

I'm at a loss. Shouldn't src be generated? There's no extra step on babeljs.io that I am missing.

Answer 1

You also get this error when your node modules are not installed, If you download the code from the internet and immediately try running the code, it throws the above error, just run

npm install

and then

npm run build // or other commands should work