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