How come npm install doesn't work on git bash

Question

I have git bash open and I type in npm install and then it returns:

bash: npm command not found

I don\'t understand, because I

Answer 1

Assuming you are on Windows trying git-bash, and node was installed by Visual Studio: The cause may be a missing npm bash script.

There is an npm.cmd bath file in the path:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Web\External\npm.cmd

But git bash wont run .cmd files. So you need to create a bash script for npm.

Create the following file named npm in your node folder: (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Web\External\)

#!/bin/sh
basedir=`dirname "$0"`

case `uname` in
    *CYGWIN*) basedir=`cygpath -w "$basedir"`;;
esac

if [ -x "$basedir/node" ]; then
  "$basedir/node"  "$basedir/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js" "$@"
  ret=$?
else 
  node  "$basedir/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js" "$@"
  ret=$?
fi
exit $ret