npm/npx

[FEATURE] Offline cache

Opened this issue · 4 comments

christianbundy commented

What / Why

Running npx is easier than npm install --global but when I'm offline it doesn't work. I'd love to have a cache!

When

Always.

Where

  • n/a

How

Just use a cache if it's available.

Current Behavior

npx only works when you're online

Expected Behavior

npx should work when I'm offline as long as I've run the command once while being online (because cache)

Who

  • n/a

References

  • n/a
christianbundy commented

I saw @zkat's comment here that it's equivalent to npm -g i foo && foo <args>, but unfortunately npm -g i comes with EACCESS errors by default and requires multiple workaround steps.

I want to tell people "run my program with npx foo" and have that Just Work. I don't want to say:

run my program with

mkdir -p ~/.npm-global
npm config set prefix '~/.npm-global'
source ~/.profile
npm i -g foo
foo

Btw if you're running zsh, replace ~/.profile with ~/.zprofile. Also if you already have a global npm prefix, sorry, just run npm i -g foo.

ljharb commented

It requires running sudo npm install -g, is all.

christianbundy commented

Yes, that's a workaround, but it has security/usability trade-offs and directly conflicts with the documentation. I love that npx doesn't run arbitrary lifecycle scripts as root and would prefer to avoid sudo as a solution.

  • 👍5
karimsa commented

Another use case for this feature request:

Since you are using npx to run an infrequently used tool, often I will need to run --help first or sometimes I might get a flag wrong here and there. Usually the lifecycle in this case ends up being: npx downloads the entire package + dependencies, runs the tool which errors out right away, npx destroys the cache. And then I have to wait for the download yet again after fixing the flag.

Also, sometimes you just want to run the tool with a dry run before actually running it. Which requires 2 installs minimum.

  • 👍7