Quick Tip — executable node modules

First of all, let's understand what does npm install -g does.

If you put a global identifier then npm install -g it is essentially installing all your packages to /usr/local/lib/node_modules

Additionally, if you have provided an executable in your package.json

example — “bin”: { “create-react-app”: “./index.js” }

then it will add create-react-app symlink to your index.js file in your system’s global executable bin folder.

/usr/local/bin/create-react-app symlink to /usr/local/lib/node_modules/create-react-app/index.js

Notice that an executable file need to specify the environment in the first line

#!/usr/bin/env node

All globally installed node modules can be “require”(available) in your node application.

Read here for more details on node path resolution. https://nodejs.org/api/modules.html#loading_from_node_modules_Folders

Let's say you installed the package locally instead of globally npm install {packagename} then you can still run it by directly executing the js in node.

$ node node_modules/lerna/bin/lerna.js

Or a better way — http://www.2ality.com/2016/01/locally-installed-npm-executables.html

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