How to install plugin locally?

SuperMike

Hi,

I developed a plugin which communicates with another local system. And I just want to install it locally since it's useless for others.

I found from doc that

“installing” a plugin by placing it in the /plugins folder is still supported. This feature may be deprecated in later versions of NodeBB

So we have to publish it in npm ?

pichalite

@SuperMike You can copy the plugin to the node_modules folder.

SuperMike

@pichalite thanks! I will take a try

SuperMike

@pichalite cheers! it works

julian

Installing plugins directly into node_modules/ will not be deprecated, as that is how regular plugins are installed

btc

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but it's relevant...

How do we stop npm from automatically removing plugins which are only installed locally like this? If I activate another plugin, my local one disappears from the node_modules folder.

julian

@btc look up npm link

btc

Thanks @julian , this is definitely the thing I was looking for.

I'm doing 'npm-link' in my custom plugin's folder, then 'npm-link node_modules/myplugin' in the main nodebb folder.

The first command works, but the second gives an error about not being able to find the remote git repo: "fatal: Could not read from remote repository".

Obviously the point is that it's a local-only plugin, so I'm not sure how to get rid of that error!

julian

@btc on the a second step, you'll want to execute just the name of the plugin you've written (and defined in package.json, e.g. npm link nodebb-theme-harmony

btc

@julian But then I get the following, because it's not looking in the right place for the package.json:

npm ERR! code ENOENT
npm ERR! syscall open
npm ERR! path /usr/bin/nodebb/nodebb-plugin-btcsso/package.json
npm ERR! errno -2
npm ERR! enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/usr/bin/nodebb/nodebb-plugin-btcsso/package.json'
npm ERR! enoent This is related to npm not being able to find a file.
npm ERR! enoent

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in: /root/.npm/_logs/2023-05-16T09_24_17_811Z-debug-0.log