single node_modules folder for multiple projects

Question

I have a list of websites like this:

project1/site
project2/site
project4/site
...
projectN/site

Each site folder has inside node_modules folder, gruntfile.js file and a package.json file. So they look like this:

project1/site/gruntfile.js
project1/site/package.json
project1/site/node_modules/
...
projectN/site/gruntfile.js
projectN/site/package.json
projectN/site/node_modules/

Everything is working fine with my tasks, plugins and stuff.

I am wondering if I can work this out with just one node_modules folder on my root folder as my websites are using similar tasks.

project1/site/
project2/site/
...
projectN/site/
/node_modules/

Is this even possible? What do I need to do?

Answer 1

You can use the -g flag with npm to install modules globally, as in: npm install -g <modulename> This will install all the modules so they are accessible to all your node projects.

And then you can create a link for each of the projects to the required modules using npm link, as explained in the link @jakerella referred to:

...there are some cases where you want to do both. Coffee-script and Express both are good examples of apps that have a command line interface, as well as a library. In those cases, you can do one of the following:

2. Install it globally, and then npm link coffee-script or npm link express (if you’re on a platform that supports symbolic links.) Then you only need to update the global copy to update all the symlinks as well.

See the npm documentation.