Bug 10460

Summary:	devtool: npm app module install does not create executable file
Product:	[Build System, Metadata & Runtime] OE-Core	Reporter:	Henry Bruce <henry.bruce>
Component:	devtools / tool chain	Assignee:	Paul Eggleton <bluelightning>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:	David Lopez Barriba <davidx.lopez.barriba>
Severity:	normal
Priority:	Medium+	CC:	brendan.le.foll, jose.perez.carranza, meta.mr.watcher, meta.watcher, ross.burton
Version:	2.2
Target Milestone:	2.2.3
Hardware:	x86
OS:	Multiple
Whiteboard:
OS type for building Yocto:	---	Type of Regression:	---
Verified:		Documentation change:	Don't know

Description Henry Bruce 2016-10-19 17:06:35 UTC

If an npm module contains an application, its executable file is not installed.

Take module cute-files as an example. 
After running "npm install cute-files", the following symbolic link for app is created: /usr/bin/cute-files -> /usr/lib/node_modules/cute-files/cute-files.js
So running "cute-files" starts the app.

So expected behavior of
$ devtool add "npm://registry.npmjs.org;name=cute-files;version=1.0.2"
$ devtool build cute-files
Would be to find /usr/bin/cute-files in package, but symbolic link is not created.

Comment 1 Paul Eggleton 2016-10-20 04:08:28 UTC

OK, so I am looking at doing this by replacing the cp -a command within do_install with npm install --prefix ${D}${prefix} -g - then all of the files including the bin symlinks get installed.

Brendan, is there a particular reason you chose not to use npm install for this? So far I only need to delete an empty ${D}${prefix}/etc directory that gets created, and I notice some of the packages disappear (build-time only dependencies? not yet verified) plus the package.json files seem to be increasing in size slightly. The resulting package does seem to work at runtime.

Comment 2 Brendan Le Foll 2016-10-20 06:22:52 UTC

No real reason no, if that works then that sounds like a much better way of doing it. I would just be careful that npm gets called with --production --no-registry so that it doesn't go and do more things than it's supposed to.

Comment 3 Paul Eggleton 2016-10-28 02:12:49 UTC

*** Bug 10517 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4 Ross Burton 2016-11-08 17:26:25 UTC

Fixed in oe-core 90cb980a1c49de99a0aec00c0cd5fc1e165490a7.

Comment 5 Henry Bruce 2017-01-30 23:56:18 UTC

Re-opening to request back-port to morty.

Comment 6 Paul Eggleton 2017-01-31 02:55:45 UTC

Unfortunately the patch for this issue appears to be the cause of bug 10760, so we'll have to get a fix for that one before backporting.

Comment 7 Paul Eggleton 2017-01-31 02:56:17 UTC

(Accidentally changed stats - oops).

Comment 8 Paul Eggleton 2017-11-05 20:26:48 UTC

So I'm setting this back to fixed to indicate that it was fixed (in master, pyro and rocko), but I don't think we can backport it to any older release - there's just too much additional work around fixing the fallout.