npm postinstall uses global bower that might not exist

[AlexClineBB]

While trying to dockerize lemur for running in our environment, I ran into an issue that I thought I'd document in case anyone else encounters it.

Following the installation instructions, you start up the python virtual environment and make develop. This takes a while in a docker container, but eventually will error out with this:

[19:16:07] 'build:inject' errored after 11 ms
[19:16:07] Error: Bower components directory does not exist at bower_components

I traced this to the fact that bower install fails to run during the setup phase, because package.json has this line:

"postinstall": "bower install --allow-root --config.interactive=false",

npm will use the global bower after installing the node modules and will fail (very quietly) if one doesn't exist:

npm install
npm WARN cannot run in wd Lemur@ bower install --allow-root --config.interactive=false (wd=/usr/local/src/lemur)

The way to workaround this error is to run bower install after the failure, using the local bower. I used something like this:

cd /usr/local/src/lemur && \
source /usr/local/src/lemur/bin/activate && \
make develop || \
node_modules/bower/bin/bower install --allow-root --config.interactive=false && \
make develop

If package.json is changed so the postinstall command uses the bower installation within the node_modules directory, this workaround won't be needed. Not sure if this should truly be a bug or if it's just a documentation clarification - I'll let the maintainers decide.

[kevgliss]

Thanks for the info, I don't know a great deal how NPM but is there a way to specify local npm during runtime? You also have the option of pre-compiling the javascript. The installation script is smart enough to check for the static/dist folder and not try to re-compile it if it exists. This is actually how we deploy it, jenkins builds a deb with compiled javascript inside.

[AlexClineBB]

Probably the cleanest way to use the local bower it to change the postinstall line to this:

"postinstall": "node_modules/.bin/bower install --allow-root --config.interactive=false",

As a thought exercise, do you have an example of how to pre-compile the javascript that I could use before make develop?

[kevgliss]

Mind opening up a PR with that change? It looks good to me.

This is essentially what I do in jenkins:

npm install
node_modules/.bin/gulp --cwd $WORKSPACE/root/apps/lemur build
node_modules/.bin/gulp --cwd $WORKSPACE/root/apps/lemur package

[kevgliss]

Closing based on #227.