How to use executables from a package installed locally in node_modules?

Question

How do I use a local version of a module in node.js. For example, in my app, I installed coffee-script:

npm install coffee-script

Answer 1

I encountered the same problem and I don't particularly like using aliases (as regular's suggested), and if you don't like them too then here's another workaround that I use, you first have to create a tiny executable bash script, say setenv.sh:

#!/bin/sh

# Add your local node_modules bin to the path
export PATH="$(npm bin):$PATH"

# execute the rest of the command
exec "$@"

and then you can then use any executables in your local /bin using this command:

./setenv.sh 
./setenv.sh 6to5-node server.js
./setenv.sh grunt

If you're using scripts in package.json then:

...,
scripts: {
    'start': './setenv.sh '
}