Caching issue with local (i.e. "file:...") dependencies

[jmike]

Hey,

I 've got a git repo with some local dependencies. Here's how my package.json looks like:

{
  "name": "foobar",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "dependencies": {
    "mysql-database": "file:./commons/mysql-database"
  }
}

Notice the file:./commons/mysql-database string, which signifies a local dependency.

The above works perfectly fine when uploading to heroku, as long as caching is disabled. When I enable caching I get the following error:

remote:        npm ERR! addLocal Could not install /tmp/build_b7f17036f4981cab00406ab0a8f4b3b7/commons/mysql-database
remote:        npm ERR! Linux 3.13.0-112-generic
remote:        npm ERR! argv "/tmp/build_6965e58613208ae8ee3ff9ccb502b3cd/.heroku/node/bin/node" "/tmp/build_6965e58613208ae8ee3ff9ccb502b3cd/.heroku/node/bin/npm" "install" "--unsafe-perm" "--userconfig" "/tmp/build_6965e58613208ae8ee3ff9ccb502b3cd/.npmrc"
remote:        npm ERR! node v7.8.0
remote:        npm ERR! npm  v4.2.0
remote:        npm ERR! path /tmp/build_b7f17036f4981cab00406ab0a8f4b3b7/commons/mysql-database
remote:        npm ERR! code ENOENT
remote:        npm ERR! errno -2
remote:        npm ERR! syscall open

A couple of notes:

1. This only happens when caching is warm, i.e. after the second git push heroku - which kinda makes sense.
2. The mysql-database package gets transpiled with babel-cli using a postinstall script. Again this works perfectly fine without caching.

My project is quite big, so caching is much necessary. Any help I could get is much appreciated.

[jmorrell]

Hmm... I tried to set up a repro example for this and couldn't get it to error: https://github.com/jmorrell/npm-local-dependency-ex

How is your setup different?

[jmike]

@jmorrell many thanks for looking into this.

I don't seem to be able to replicate this issue, even though I spent a full hour tweaking your code to look more like what I have.

Apparently I am doing something wrong, but I can't afford any more time to look into it. Feel free to close the issue for now.

[jmorrell]

Closing. Thanks for teaching me that local dependencies are a thing :)

[stropho]

@jmike I see it has been a while, but do you remember where the problem was? I'm having the same/similar issue and can't figure it out.
I'm trying to install a package from a local tarball

[jmike]

@stropho I never found what the issue really was.

I suggest you simply use yarn workspaces and get done with it.

[stropho]

well, after an hour or so I felt really stupid. My issue was the "universal" .gitignore file. By default it ignored all .tgz files, nested dist/ folders etc. So the file I wanted to install never got to git 😮 😂