How I Setup Gulp on Shared Dev Server

Gulp is a build tool that lets you automate common development task efficiently. As we all know gulp has its dependencies installed as npm modules and it downloads a lot of modules depending on your setup. In this post i wanna share how i setup gulp in a way that i dont need to do npm install on every project i have.

My Setup / Scenario ​

We have a common build scripts that is used by everyone on every projects. Having it install on every projects will consume dist space. So why not install all dependencies globally at once.

This setup is best applied (e.g. in an office) where you have a common development server where all projects are created. In my case we have an ubuntu dev server. Of course you must have access to it through ssh so that you can run gulp tasks.

Install & Configure ​

The first thing to do is to ssh into your dev server and install your gulp dependencies globally (e.g. npm install -g nanocss). Next is to configure npm to also scan global install path for required modules, because by default npm only scan the current working dir for modules.

Edit either ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile and add this line below:

export NODE_PATH=/user/local/lib/node_modules

On most installations, that is where the installed path for node modules on ubuntu. To get you an idea run the cmd which node on the cli.

Actually that's it! No more talking, seriously!

Conclusion ​

You should know when to install node modules globally or locally to efficiently use it.
Also a better understanding on npm folder structures will give light on the dark and magical world of npm. :p