use system npm/node

I want to use the system’s node/npm instead of installing one because installing is slow. But when I omit the install step, I get:

java.io.IOException: Cannot run program ".../target/node/node" (in directory "...//target"): error=2, No such file or directory -> [Help 1]

though I know that npm/node is on the path. Is there a way to use the system’s node/npm instead of installing one?

[naderghanbari]

Even if being faster is not one’s concern, having the option to use the system installed node is really expected from this plugin. Most of similar plugins have such an option even as the default behavior, if you want to cache between builds, you can simply override the deault by saying something like <downloadNode>true</downloadNode>

[worldsayshi]

For anyone else arriving here looking for clues on how to speed up the build process using frontend-maven-plugin one thing that helped me slash a lot of build time was to avoid copying node_modules into target. I use the warSourceExcludes directive in maven-war-plugin for this. Confusingly enough there are many different exclude directives in war plugin but this one is the one that controls what is to be copied into target folder in the first place. The others control what is to be included into the war package.

Example:

  <plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
      <configuration>
          <dependentWarExcludes>WEB-INF/lib/*.jar</dependentWarExcludes>
          <warSourceExcludes>**/node_modules/**</warSourceExcludes>
          <archiveClasses>true</archiveClasses>
          <attachClasses>true</attachClasses>
      </configuration>
  </plugin>