This server provides npm
as a service accessible via http endpoints.
This allows virtual machines and other slow clients to offload the work of building node_modules
and thus perform significantly faster installs.
npmserve
and npmserve-server
are experimental projects. These tools should not be used for deploying production dependencies. The client/server model does not yet have authentication or authorization in place. This project also does not guarantee the integrity or security of dependencies installed from npm or distributed to clients. Please consider your own requirements and constraints before incorporating npmserve
into your workflow.
-
command-line client: available at npmserve.
-
web interface: the server provides a web interface to delete and trigger builds:
To solve these problems, we are providing a server on which clients can execute their
npm installs by uploading a package.json
file. In response, they will receive a
node_modules.tar.gz
archive containing their install results.
Currently, the server must be run on a machine with the same architecture as the clients. If this is not the case, calls to /npm/install
may return node_modules
archives containing extensions compiled for the wrong architecture.
To the extent possible, the npmserve
server provides operations analogous to
those that a user running npm
locally might do. Users running locally often
resort to forceful actions such as deleting their entire node_modules
directory or clearing their cache. We provide the facility to perform those
actions via the API as well. These are documented below.
POST /npm/install
- behavior: performs an
npm install
on the server - arguments:
packageJson
: string ofpackage.json
file contents - content-type:
application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8
- response: compressed archive
node_modules.tar.gz
, containingnode_modules
DELETE /npm/install/:hash
- behavior: deletes the
node_modules
build on the server for the specified build hash - arguments: none
- response: void
POST /npm/cache/clean
- behavior: clears the
.npm
cache on the server - arguments: none
- response: void
This project relies on the following environment variables:
name | type | default | description |
---|---|---|---|
BUILD_DATA_DIR |
string | ./data |
path to the directory in which to store build data |
NPM_CONFIG_REGISTRY |
string | https://registry.npmjs.org |
the npm registry to use for npm install |