npm install largely does not work within Vagrant

[orblivion]

When I try to build an app that uses npm install with vagrant-spk, certain node packages have assorted errors of expected files missing during the build process. If I ssh into the VM to inspect the situation, I find that the containing directories are often not there either.

I poked around the Internet and it seems to be a known issue with VirtualBox and npm:

• https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/19545
• npm does not work with Virtualbox shared folders. npm/npm#992

I'm not sure I get the complete picture of what's going on. Supposedly this is due to VirtualBox disabling symlinks for synced folders for security reasons. From direct observation I can ssh into my VM and create a symlink, so I'm not sure exactly what's going on. But my npm is in fact failing.

Proposed Workarounds

Turn symlinks back on with a setting

You can turn the symlinks back on with a setting if you trust the guest VM. I tried it once and it didn't work. I likely did it wrong.

• https://www.speich.net/articles/en/2018/12/24/virtualbox-6-how-to-enable-symlinks-in-a-linux-guest-os/
• https://serverfault.com/questions/501599/vagrant-synced-folders-and-vboxinternal2-sharedfoldersenablesymlinkscreate

Bind Mount (worked for me)

You can apparently work around this with a bind mount:

• Installing NPM Package do not work inside Vagrant Ubuntu 18.04 LTS box hashicorp/vagrant#11842

Now, I'm not sure if I'm getting this suggestion right, but it worked for me in the following way:

• In setup.sh:
  • create /opt/build
• In build.sh:
  • copy /opt/app to /opt/build/app
  • sudo mount --bind /opt/build/app /opt/app
    • at this point /apt/app is not synced to your host, but npm will build thinking it's sitting in /opt/app.
  • do build as normal within /opt/app
    • this of course actually builds in /opt/build/app, but if your generated files ever include an absolute path (as npm packages have) they will show up as /opt/app.
  • sudo umount /opt/app
  • copy node_modules and other generated directories from /opt/build/app to their respective places in /opt/app
    • Now the built node modules are inside the synced folder, and should show up in your host

At this point it will run. If there's a problem with symlinks, I'm not sure why it does, given that it can't build. I even tried comparing the node_modules directories in /opt/app and /opt/build/app/ and they're the same.

Other

There are others. One was to use NFS to sync them, not sure how secure that is in this context.

Assorted:

• https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/10085 - General ticket related to symlinks, not npm
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24200333/symbolic-links-and-synced-folders-in-vagrant - Another report, not particularly related to npm