npm packages globally without sudo on macOS and Linuxnpm installs packages locally within your projects by default. You can also install packages globally (e.g. npm install -g <package>) (useful for command-line apps). However the downside of this is that you need to be root (or use sudo) to be able to install globally.
Here is a way to install packages globally for a given user.
mkdir "${HOME}/.npm-packages"
npm where to store globally installed packagesnpm config set prefix "${HOME}/.npm-packages"
npm will find installed binaries and man pagesAdd the following to your .bashrc/.zshrc:
NPM_PACKAGES="${HOME}/.npm-packages"
export PATH="$PATH:$NPM_PACKAGES/bin"
# Preserve MANPATH if you already defined it somewhere in your config.
# Otherwise, fall back to `manpath` so we can inherit from `/etc/manpath`.
export MANPATH="${MANPATH-$(manpath)}:$NPM_PACKAGES/share/man"
If you're using fish, add the following to ~/.config/fish/config.fish:
set NPM_PACKAGES "$HOME/.npm-packages"
set PATH $NPM_PACKAGES/bin $PATH
set MANPATH $NPM_PACKAGES/share/man $MANPATH
If you have erased your MANPATH by mistake, you can restore it by running set -Ux MANPATH (manpath -g) $MANPATH once. Do not put this command in your config.fish.
Check out npm-g_nosudo for doing the above steps automagically
NOTE: If you are running macOS, the .bashrc file may not yet exist, and the terminal will be obtaining its environment parameters from another file, such as .profile or .bash_profile. These files also reside in the user's home folder. In this case, simply adding the following line to them will instruct Terminal to also load the .bashrc file:
source ~/.bashrc
See also: npm's documentation on
"Fixing npm permissions".