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How to prevent npm install on App

Posted on November 2, 2020

It seems that the app platform always runs the npm install command when it’s building a component. Since we compile our assets on our development platform the npm install command is unnecessary. When the package.json file is removed it doesn’t run this command, but I want to keep this file in our repo.

Is there any reason this command is automatically executed. And is there any way to prevent this?

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Kamal Nasser

November 3, 2020

There isn’t a directly configurable option that stops npm install from running. The most flexible way to customize the build process is to use a Dockerfile which gives you complete control over the build process and the resulting container image.

For npm install specifically there is a workaround that you can use. If you do not need it at all, you can hijack the preinstall script to remove the file completely, like so:

package.json

  "scripts": {
    "preinstall": "[[ $STOP_NPM_INSTALL == 1 ]] && rm package.json || true"
  },

If the STOP_NPM_INSTALL env var is set to 1, when npm install is run the package.json file will “self-destruct” stopping the install process without any errors. Otherwise the process continues as usual.

Deleting the whole file is a little crude but it works. You could expand it a bit to run an external script that more carefully only removes the dependencies field from the file if you wish.

I hope that helps! Out of curiosity, which programming language/build environment does your app use?

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