angular-cli doesn't work when node_modules is located in a parent directory

Please provide us with the following information:

OS?

Windows 7, 8 or 10. Linux (which distribution). Mac OSX (Yosemite? El Capitan?) Alpine linux (inside Docker container)

Versions.

Please run ng --version. If there’s nothing outputted, please run in a Terminal: node --version and paste the result here: 1.0.0-beta.24

but running ng --version gives:

Cannot find module '/opt/app/ngapp/node_modules/@angular/common/package.json'
Error: Cannot find module '/opt/app/ngapp/node_modules/@angular/common/package.json'
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:470:15)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:418:25)
    at Module.require (module.js:498:17)
    at require (internal/module.js:20:19)
    at Class.getVersion (/opt/app/node_modules/angular-cli/commands/version.js:67:25)
    at /opt/app/node_modules/angular-cli/commands/version.js:63:67
    at Array.forEach (native)
    at Class.getDependencyVersions (/opt/app/node_modules/angular-cli/commands/version.js:63:14)
    at /opt/app/node_modules/angular-cli/commands/version.js:41:58
    at Array.forEach (native)
    at Class.run (/opt/app/node_modules/angular-cli/commands/version.js:40:19)
    at Class.<anonymous> (/opt/app/node_modules/angular-cli/ember-cli/lib/models/command.js:152:17)
    at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:103:7)

Repro steps.

Was this an app that wasn’t created using the CLI? What change did you do on your code? etc.

1. ng new ngapp
2. cd ngapp
3. mv node_modules …
4. ng build

The log given by the failure.

Normally this include a stack trace and some more information.

You seem to not be dependending on “@angular/core”. This is an error.

Mention any other details that might be useful.

I want to use angular CLI inside a docker container using docker-compose. I cannot have the node_modules folder inside the source code and a common pattern to solve this issue is to move the node_modules folder to the parent directory. Node will correctly recognise dependencies, but for some reason angular CLI is failing to find the @angular/core package.

If I run node and then do require('@angular/core') the package is correctly loaded.

[maxime1992]

Any news about that?

My use case is the following:

I’m building an app with backend and frontend both merged into a monorepo.

I do have the following structure:

| package.json
| node_modules/
| backend/
| frontend/
  | .angular-cli.json

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve managed to solved that in a clean way 😃 (avoiding symlinks or moving .angular-cli.json to top folder)

Thanks

[kylecordes]

I’ve hit this same problem, the “You seem to not be depending”.

This issue might be more than a “nice to have” - the current behavior breaks the Node module resolution rules:

https://nodejs.org/api/modules.html#modules_loading_from_node_modules_folders

If the module identifier passed to require() is not a core module, and does not begin with ‘/’, ‘…/’, or ‘./’, then Node.js starts at the parent directory of the current module, and adds /node_modules, and attempts to load the module from that location. Node will not append node_modules to a path already ending in node_modules.

If it is not found there, then it moves to the parent directory, and so on, until the root of the file system is reached.

I think it can be worked around with some bash hackery to add symlinks - but that’s ugly, and the current behavior violates the Node module resolution “spec”.