Minstall NPM | npm.io

Minstall is a local module installer, intended to be used as postinstall-script.

Example

Let's say you have the following modular app, and run npm install on it:

my-modular-app
├── modules
│   ├── database
│   │   ├── index.js
│   │   └── package.json [requires mongoose and lodash]
│   └── tasks
│       ├── index.js
│       └── package.json [requires lodash and database]
├── index.js
└── package.json [requires express, uses database and tasks]

The problems

Your local modules (database and tasks) wouldn't work, because their dependencies are missing.
To require your modules, you would need to either npm-link them, or use a ./modules/-prefix

The solution

Minstall installs the necessary dependencies to the root-node_modules, and symlinks the modules there. After running npm install with minstall as postinstall, the structure looks like this:

my-modular-app
├── modules
│   ├── database
│   │   ├── index.js
│   │   ├── node_modules
│   │   │   ├── lodash -> ../../../node_modules/lodash
│   │   │   └── mongoose -> ../../../node_modules/mongoose
│   │   └── package.json
│   └── tasks
│   │   ├── index.js
│   │   ├── node_modules
│   │   │   └── lodash -> ../../../node_modules/lodash
│   │   │   └── database -> ../../database
│   │   └── package.json
├── node_modules
│   ├── lodash
│   ├── minstall
│   └── mongoose
├── index.js
└── package.json

All modules work, because their dependencies are present
- conflicting dependencies end up in the associated modules, not in the root
Modules can be required directly, because they are symlinked
- ~~require('./modules/database')~~ -> require('database')
The installation is faster and smaller, because dependencies are only installed once
- dependencies that are already installed, are not re-downloaded (except for npm5 users, because of npm issue #16853)

Usage

install with npm install minstall --save
add it as postinstall-script to your package.json:
modules-folder is optional, and defaults to modules if omitted

"scripts": {
  "postinstall": "minstall <modules-folder>"
}

Parameters

Minstall knows the following flags:

--no-link prevents minstall from linking the local modules to the root-node_modules
--link-only makes minstall go through the linking-process only, without installing anything
--cleanup makes minstall remove all node_modules-folders before installing dependencies (this is forced for npm5)
--dependency-check-only makes install print the dependency-check only, without touching any files or installing anything
--assume-local-modules-satisfy-non-semver-dependency-versions (aka --trust-local-modules) makes minstall assume that a local module satisfies every requested version of that module that is not valid semver (like github-urls and tag-names)
--loglevel <loglevel> sets the loglevel (error, warn, info verbose, debug, silly)
--no-hoist <dependency>. makes minstall not hoist that dependency. <dependency> has the form name@versionRange, e.g. --no-hoist aurelia-cli@^0.30.1. If you omit the versionRange, no version of that dependency will be hoisted. The name can be a glob expression (see minimatch), e.g. --no-hoist aurelia-*. This is useful for dependencies that don't play nice when hoisted/linked. This flag can be added multiple times.