Skip to content

npm start fails after copying a generated project to a new directory  #200

Closed
Closed
npm start fails after copying a generated project to a new directory #200

Description

@dceddia
dceddia
opened on Jul 26, 2016

Here is the failure:

$ npm start

> bug-test@0.0.1 start /Users/dceddia/Projects/pure-react/sandbox/bug-test-copy
> react-scripts start

module.js:339
    throw err;
    ^

Error: Cannot find module 'cross-spawn'
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:337:15)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:287:25)
    at Module.require (module.js:366:17)
    at require (module.js:385:17)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/Users/dceddia/Projects/pure-react/sandbox/bug-test-copy/node_modules/.bin/react-scripts:3:13)
    at Module._compile (module.js:425:26)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:432:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:356:32)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:311:12)
    at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:457:10)

npm ERR! Darwin 14.5.0
npm ERR! argv "/usr/local/Cellar/node/5.0.0/bin/node" "/Users/dceddia/.node/bin/npm" "start"
npm ERR! node v5.0.0
npm ERR! npm  v3.3.12
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! bug-test@0.0.1 start: `react-scripts start`
npm ERR! Exit status 1
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Failed at the bug-test@0.0.1 start script 'react-scripts start'.
npm ERR! Make sure you have the latest version of node.js and npm installed.
npm ERR! If you do, this is most likely a problem with the bug-test package,
npm ERR! not with npm itself.
npm ERR! Tell the author that this fails on your system:
npm ERR!     react-scripts start
npm ERR! You can get their info via:
npm ERR!     npm owner ls bug-test
npm ERR! There is likely additional logging output above.

npm ERR! Please include the following file with any support request:
npm ERR!     /Users/dceddia/Projects/pure-react/sandbox/bug-test-copy/npm-debug.log

To reproduce:

$ create-react-app bug-test
$ cp -r bug-test bug-test-copy
$ cd bug-test-copy
$ npm start

At first I thought it might have something to do with having run npm start from within bug-test before copying it, but skipping that step didn't have any effect.

Removing node_modules and reinstalling them fixes it:

$ cd bug-test-copy
$ rm -r node_modules
$ npm install
$ npm start   # works!

Using cp -a instead of cp -r does not cause the problem:

$ create-react-app bug-test
$ cp -a bug-test bug-test-copy
$ cd bug-test-copy
$ npm start   # works!

I'm running Node 5.0.0 and npm 3.3.12.

I tried (via nvm) with Node 6.3.1 and npm 3.10.3 and got the same behavior.

The cp -a vs cp -r makes me think this might be an npm bug.

Activity

  1. dceddia commented on Jul 26, 2016

    @dceddia
    dceddia
    on Jul 26, 2016
    ContributorAuthor

    Manually running the start.js script works whether I'm using the project copied with cp -a or cp -r:

    $ node node_modules/react-scripts/scripts/start.js   # works!

    Oddly, when comparing the 2 projects side-by-side, the node_modules directories appear to be identical:

    $ create-react-app bug1
$ cp -r bug1 bug2r
$ cp -a bug1 bug2a
$ diff --brief -r bug2a/node_modules bug2r/node_modules  # no output

  2. latentflip commented on Jul 26, 2016

    @latentflip
    latentflip
    on Jul 26, 2016

    I was intrigued so I dug into this real quick.

    The problem is that cp -r doesn't necessarily preserve symlinks, and just copies the file contents instead.

    npm run start uses the react-scripts bin file, which is at ./node_modules/.bin/react-scripts however, this should be symlinked into ./node_modules/react-scripts/bin/react-scripts.js. This symlink means that npm can find the cross-spawn module which is a subdependency of react-scripts.

    However, cp -r doesn't preserve that symlink, and instead just copies the contents of the .bin file. npm now doesn't know to look within the node_modules/react-scripts/node_modules dir to find cross-spawn.

    cp -a will preserve symlinks, so avoids the problem.

    Looks like diff in general just resolves symlinks and compares the file contents, hence it not spotting this issue.

    I'm not sure that this can really be resolved by create-react-app. Perhaps npm should be detecting non-symlinks in ./node_modules/.bin I dunno?

  3. gaearon commented on Jul 26, 2016

    @gaearon
    gaearon
    on Jul 26, 2016
    Contributor

    I’ll close because this is not actionable for us—it’s just how npm bin works.

  4. gaearon
    closed this as completedon Jul 26, 2016

  5. cpmech commented on Feb 24, 2017

    @cpmech
    cpmech
    on Feb 24, 2017

    Same problem here

  6. kenkoooo commented on Mar 3, 2017

    @kenkoooo
    kenkoooo
    on Mar 3, 2017
    $ npm install -g npm@latest  # or, npm install -g npm@latest --prefix "C:\Program Files\nodejs"
$ rm -rf node_modules        # or, `cmd /c rmdir /s /q node_modules` on Windows
$ npm install

  7. fahmidme commented on Mar 4, 2017

    @fahmidme
    fahmidme
    on Mar 4, 2017

    @kenkoooo Thank you so much your solution worked perfectly!

  8. Edxael commented on Mar 26, 2017

    @Edxael
    Edxael
    on Mar 26, 2017

    @kenkoooo Thanks again you solution fix my app.

  9. normeno commented on Jun 19, 2017

    @normeno
    normeno
    on Jun 19, 2017

    @kenkoooo Thank you!

  10. allpratik commented on Jun 20, 2017

    @allpratik
    allpratik
    on Jun 20, 2017

    Facing the same issue! But any of above mentioned solutions didn't work for me. I'm on Ubuntu 16.04.

  11. dceddia commented on Jun 20, 2017

    @dceddia
    dceddia
    on Jun 20, 2017
    ContributorAuthor

    If npm is failing it's worth giving yarn a try. I had a few intermittent npm failures on our CI server at one point, and switching to yarn solved them.

  12. marcusstenbeck commented on Jun 29, 2017

    @marcusstenbeck
    marcusstenbeck
    on Jun 29, 2017

    @allpratik If you have a package-lock.json file, try:

    $ rm package-lock.json
$ rm -rf node_modules
$ npm install

  13. gaearon commented on Jun 29, 2017

    @gaearon
    gaearon
    on Jun 29, 2017
    Contributor

    Also if you use npm 5.x, downgrade to 4.x.

    npm -v
npm i -g npm@4.x

    npm 5.x has many known issues right now and is buggy.

  14. jhaddow commented on Jul 10, 2017

    @jhaddow
    jhaddow
    on Jul 10, 2017

    I upgraded to npm 5.1.0 and it fixed the problem for me. I blew out my node_modules folder after upgrading and ran npm i again.

  15. hajarrhechchou commented on Jul 21, 2017

    @hajarrhechchou
    hajarrhechchou
    on Jul 21, 2017

    Please help me :(

    0 info it worked if it ends with ok
    1 verbose cli [ 'C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe',
    1 verbose cli 'C:\Users\hajar\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm\bin\npm-cli.js',
    1 verbose cli 'start' ]
    2 info using npm@5.3.0
    3 info using node@v6.11.1
    4 verbose run-script [ 'prestart', 'start', 'poststart' ]
    5 info lifecycle design-angular2@1.2.0prestart: design-angular2@1.2.0
    6 info lifecycle design-angular2@1.2.0    start: design-angular2@1.2.0
    7 verbose lifecycle design-angular2@1.2.0start: unsafe-perm in lifecycle true
    8 verbose lifecycle design-angular2@1.2.0    start: PATH: C:\Users\hajar\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm\bin\node-gyp-bin;C:\Users\hajar\Desktop\vsc\veille\app2\node_modules.bin;C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\11.2.0\server\bin;C:\Program Files (x86)\AMD APP\bin\x86_64;C:\Program Files (x86)\AMD APP\bin\x86;C:\ProgramData\Oracle\Java\javapath;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0;C:\Program Files (x86)\AMD\ATI.ACE\Core-Static;C:\Program Files (x86)\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static;C:\Program Files (x86)\Brackets\command;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\TypeScript\2.4;C:\Program Files\Git\cmd;C:\Program Files\nodejs;C:\Users\hajar\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm\bin\node-gyp-bin;C:\Users\hajar\Desktop\vsc\veille\app2\node_modules.bin;C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\11.2.0\server\bin;C:\Program Files (x86)\AMD APP\bin\x86_64;C:\Program Files (x86)\AMD APP\bin\x86;C:\ProgramData\Oracle\Java\javapath;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0;C:\Program Files (x86)\AMD\ATI.ACE\Core-Static;C:\Program Files (x86)\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static;C:\Program Files (x86)\Brackets\command;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\TypeScript\2.4;C:\Program Files\Git\cmd;C:\Program Files\nodejs;C:\Program Files\sts-bundle\sts-3.8.4.RELEASE;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\TypeScript\2.4;C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\3.4\bin;C:\Users\hajar\AppData\Roaming\npm;C:\Program Files\nodejs;C:\Users\hajar\Desktop\vsc\veille\app2\node_modules
    9 verbose lifecycle design-angular2@1.2.0start: CWD: C:\Users\hajar\Desktop\vsc\veille\app2
    10 silly lifecycle design-angular2@1.2.0    start: Args: [ '/d /s /c', 'tsc && concurrently "tsc -w" "lite-server" ' ]
    11 silly lifecycle design-angular2@1.2.0start: Returned: code: 2 signal: null
    12 info lifecycle design-angular2@1.2.0    start: Failed to exec start script
    13 verbose stack Error: design-angular2@1.2.0 start: tsc && concurrently "tsc -w" "lite-server"
    13 verbose stack Exit status 2
    13 verbose stack at EventEmitter. (C:\Users\hajar\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm\lib\utils\lifecycle.js:289:16)
    13 verbose stack at emitTwo (events.js:106:13)
    13 verbose stack at EventEmitter.emit (events.js:191:7)
    13 verbose stack at ChildProcess. (C:\Users\hajar\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm\lib\utils\spawn.js:40:14)
    13 verbose stack at emitTwo (events.js:106:13)
    13 verbose stack at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:191:7)
    13 verbose stack at maybeClose (internal/child_process.js:891:16)
    13 verbose stack at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (internal/child_process.js:226:5)
    14 verbose pkgid design-angular2@1.2.0
    15 verbose cwd C:\Users\hajar\Desktop\vsc\veille\app2
    16 verbose Windows_NT 6.1.7601
    17 verbose argv "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe" "C:\Users\hajar\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm\bin\npm-cli.js" "start"
    18 verbose node v6.11.1
    19 verbose npm v5.3.0
    20 error code ELIFECYCLE
    21 error errno 2
    22 error design-angular2@1.2.0 start: tsc && concurrently "tsc -w" "lite-server"
    22 error Exit status 2
    23 error Failed at the design-angular2@1.2.0 start script.
    23 error This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.
    24 verbose exit [ 2, true ]

  16. felixdivo commented on Aug 20, 2017

    @felixdivo
    felixdivo
    on Aug 20, 2017

    I faced this problem when moving from npm to yarn, and

    rm -rf node_modules
yarn install

    solved it

  17. vjvirtan commented on Oct 24, 2017

    @vjvirtan
    vjvirtan
    on Oct 24, 2017

    If you change node_modules directory you have to change paths also inside node_modules/* package.json files. Search and replace \old_path to new one.
    With Eclipse it is easy task with file search and replace.

    If you want to change /src path then modify react-scripts/config/paths.js

  18. haoxunba commented on Nov 16, 2017

    @haoxunba
    haoxunba
    on Nov 16, 2017

    thanks，it is save me

  19. Gpia commented on Jul 17, 2018

    @Gpia
    Gpia
    on Jul 17, 2018

    @latentflip You are really right, thank you very much. So many people just said the solution while you told us the truth.

  20. techy-manoj commented on Jul 19, 2018

    @techy-manoj
    techy-manoj
    on Jul 19, 2018

    @kenkoooo Thanks it worked for me.

  21. youzeliang commented on Aug 23, 2018

    @youzeliang
    youzeliang
    on Aug 23, 2018

    yeah

  22. imjuoy commented on Oct 25, 2018

    @imjuoy
    imjuoy
    on Oct 25, 2018

    Just wanted this.

  23. CarliBotes commented on Nov 6, 2018

    @CarliBotes
    CarliBotes
    on Nov 6, 2018

    I just ran into this error when copying the create-react-app contents to a new directory.
    All I had to do was:

    1. Delete the entire node_modules directory
    2. Re-run npm install
    3. Find and replace any remaining occurrences of the old path with the new path
    4. Run npm start
  24. lock
    locked and limited conversation to collaborators on Jan 9, 2019
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

      Milestone

      No milestone

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions