App Platform keeps using cached node_modules despite changes

Question

I have been deploying a node.js server application via app platform without issue. In the last push to github, I have introduced typescript which has made significant changes to my package.json and package-lock.json including adding typescript 4.1.3.

my build command is now

"build": "tsc",

But my build is failing because with the following because it can’t find the tsc command. relevant bit of the deployment logs below…

tsystems-server | 16:28:37 Installing node_modules using npm
tsystems-server | 16:28:44 added 119 packages in 5.537s
tsystems-server | 16:28:45 Running custom build command: npm run build
tsystems-server | 16:28:45 
tsystems-server | 16:28:45 > tsystems-server@1.0.0 build /workspace
tsystems-server | 16:28:45 > tsc
tsystems-server | 16:28:45 
tsystems-server | 16:28:45 sh: 1: tsc: not found

Not sure what is going wrong, the npm run build command works locally. I have tried manually referencing “./node_modules/…etc…/tsc” in the build command but that didn’t work. Also tried npx tsc but that just got really wierd.

Any clues?

Michael

mdausmann · Accepted Answer

This is a known issue with App Platform node builds NOT installing dev dependencies (which is really stoopid).

to fix, alter your build command to this.

npm install --only=dev && npm run build && npm prune --production

The issue is discussed here…

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/how-do-you-use-node-js-devdependencies-in-the-app-platform-builds

Sri Charan Madhavapeddi · Answer

Hello,

I understand that you are experiencing an issue with compiling TypeScript while building the app. You need to call “tsc” from an npm script by including command such as ( npm install typescript -g ) because I can see the build is failing at below line with “tsc not found” error:

tsc -p ./server/tsconfig.json --outDir ./dist && next build

Can you try this and keep us posted, if this helped!

Cheers, Sri Charan