Node

installing on debian

From the nodejs docs, how to install on debian: https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/#debian-and-ubuntu-based-linux-distributions

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_9.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

no npm binary found

If no npm binary is found after running apt-get install nodejs, you probably aren't using the latest up-to-date nodejs package. The curl command above is necessary to update which version of nodejs aptitude is trying to install.

installing node packages

I'll use the mongo-express package to illustrate.

There are two ways to install a package: locally, and globally.

Installing a package locally will create a package lock json file and a node modules directory, from which the mongo-express script can be run. To install locally, run:

npm install mongo-express

Installing a package globally keeps things a little more clean, all files are maintained in /usr/lib/node_modules. To install, add the -g flag:

npm install -g mongo-express