I recently spent time trying to debug an npm install process that could not resolve references for the packages listed in the repo. I had encountered the issue before, when I was less familiar with npm generally. Having had more experience since that initial issue, I realized the problem was that I needed to ensure I could authenticate to the registries listed when the install ran.
I opened my .npmrc file in my local machine user directory, added the credentials I generated, and retried my install; it failed. This was really perplexing, because I was pretty certain the new credentials were good. I worked on the problem with a colleague, regenerating and adding credentials with no resolution. We finally added the credentials to the local project .npmrc to ensure the credentials were valid, and the install completed.
This reminded me that the last time I tried to deal with the issue, the problem was that a different .npmrc file was being referenced than the one in my user directory on my local machine. I navigated to the remote file directory that was assigned by the organization and confirmed there was another .npmrc file located there with similar credentials to the ones on my local machine.
I researched the issue on Google and found a lead regarding the $HOME directory for bash. I took a look and found that my bash $HOME directory was set to the remote location:
$ $HOME
# bash: /<remote drive letter>/<remote folder name>: Is a directoryI know my organization intends to move us away from using this remote location, so although npm was using this directory, I wanted to be able to repoint to my local machine.
Some of my research indicated that this was not something a user should necessarily do but I found a number of methods…for Macs! As a Windows user primarily, I find I often need to dig deeper to find the method I need to resolve an issue.
In this case, I found a really to-the-point article from ShellHacks that helped resolve the issue. By adding a user-level variable %HOME% to a machine’s environment variables, a bash client can reference and resolve that variable. Once I made the change, I was able to confirm that $HOME now pointed to my local machine:
$ $HOME
# bash: /c/<local folder name>: Is a directoryMy npm install could now reference the proper .npmrc file with my updated credentials. While this issue occurs infrequently, it’s helpful to have reference articles that assist Windows users with this change.