Where should my npm modules be installed on Mac OS X?

Question

I was attempting to upgrade phonegap via npm when I started running into trouble. Long story short, there are two node_modules directo

Answer 1

/usr/local/lib/node_modules is the correct directory for globally installed node modules.

/usr/local/share/npm/lib/node_modules makes no sense to me. One issue here is that you're confused because there are two directories called node_modules:

/usr/local/lib/node_modules
/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules

The latter seems to be node modules that came with Node, e.g., lodash, when the former is Node modules that I installed using npm.

Answer 2

Second Thomas David Kehoe, with the following caveat --

If you are using node version manager (nvm), your global node modules will be stored under whatever version of node you are using at the time you saved the module.

So ~/.nvm/versions/node/{version}/lib/node_modules/.

Answer 3

npm root -g

to check the npm_modules global location

Answer 4

If you want to know the location of you NPM packages, you should:

which npm // locate a program file in the user's path SEE man which
// OUTPUT SAMPLE
/usr/local/bin/npm
la /usr/local/bin/npm // la: aliased to ls -lAh SEE which la THEN man ls
lrwxr-xr-x  1 t04435  admin    46B 18 Sep 10:37 /usr/local/bin/npm -> /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js

So given that npm is a NODE package itself, it is installed in the same location as other packages(EUREKA). So to confirm you should cd into node_modules and list the directory.

cd /usr/local/lib/node_modules/
ls
#SAMPLE OUTPUT
@angular npm .... all global npm packages installed

OR

npm root -g

As per @anthonygore 's comment