This is handy for installing your own stuff, so that you can work on it and
test iteratively without having to continually rebuild.
Package linking is a two-step process.
First, npmlink in a package folder with no arguments will create a
symlink in the global folder {prefix}/lib/node_modules/<package> that
links to the package where the npmlink command was executed. It will
also link any bins in the package to {prefix}/bin/{name}. Note that
npmlink uses the global prefix (see npmprefix-g for its value).
Next, in some other location, npmlinkpackage-name will create a
symbolic link from globally-installed package-name to node_modules/ of
the current folder.
Note that package-name is taken from package.json, not from the
directory name.
The package name can be optionally prefixed with a scope. See
scope. The scope must be preceded by an @-symbol and
followed by a slash.
When creating tarballs for npmpublish, the linked packages are
"snapshotted" to their current state by resolving the symbolic links, if
they are included in bundleDependencies.
For example:
cd ~/projects/node-redis # go into the package directory
npm link # creates global link
cd ~/projects/node-bloggy # go into some other package directory.
npm link redis # link-install the package
Now, any changes to ~/projects/node-redis will be reflected in
~/projects/node-bloggy/node_modules/node-redis/. Note that the link
should be to the package name, not the directory name for that package.
You may also shortcut the two steps in one. For example, to do the
above use-case in a shorter way:
cd ~/projects/node-bloggy # go into the dir of your main project
npm link ../node-redis # link the dir of your dependency
The second line is the equivalent of doing:
(cd ../node-redis; npm link)
npm link redis
That is, it first creates a global link, and then links the global
installation target into your project's node_modules folder.
Note that in this case, you are referring to the directory name,
node-redis, rather than the package name redis.
If your linked package is scoped (see scope) your
link command must include that scope, e.g.
npm link @myorg/privatepackage