npm install -g less does not work: EACCES: permission denied

Question

I'm trying to set up less on phpstorm so I can compile .less files to .css on save. I have installed node.js and the next step (according to this https://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/help/transpiling-sass-less-and-scss-to-css.html) is running this command in the terminal

npm install -g less

However when I do this I get these errors

☁  ~  npm install -g less
npm WARN install Couldn't install optional dependency: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/Users/brentscholl/.npm/mkdirp/0.5.1'
npm WARN install Couldn't install optional dependency: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/Users/brentscholl/.npm/graceful-fs/3.0.8'
npm WARN install Couldn't install optional dependency: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/Users/brentscholl/.npm/extend/3.0.0'
npm WARN install Couldn't install optional dependency: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/Users/brentscholl/.npm/readable-stream/2.0.4'
npm WARN install Couldn't install optional dependency: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/Users/brentscholl/.npm/chalk/1.1.1'
npm WARN install Couldn't install optional dependency: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/Users/brentscholl/.npm/xtend/4.0.1'
npm WARN checkPermissions Missing write access to /usr/local/lib/node_modules
/usr/local/lib
└─┬ [email protected]
  ├─┬ [email protected]
  │ └── [email protected]
  ├── [email protected]
  ├── [email protected]
  ├─┬ [email protected]
  │ └── [email protected]
  └─┬ [email protected]
    └── [email protected]

npm ERR! Darwin 15.0.0
npm ERR! argv "/usr/local/bin/node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "install" "-g" "less"
npm ERR! node v5.0.0
npm ERR! npm  v3.3.6
npm ERR! path /usr/local/lib/node_modules
npm ERR! code EACCES
npm ERR! errno -13
npm ERR! syscall access

npm ERR! Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/usr/local/lib/node_modules'
npm ERR!     at Error (native)
npm ERR!  { [Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/usr/local/lib/node_modules']
npm ERR!   errno: -13,
npm ERR!   code: 'EACCES',
npm ERR!   syscall: 'access',
npm ERR!   path: '/usr/local/lib/node_modules' }
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Please try running this command again as root/Administrator.

npm ERR! Please include the following file with any support request:
npm ERR!     /Users/brentscholl/npm-debug.log

I'm a complete noob here and not sure what to do next. Any help would be very appreciated!

Answer 1

Using sudo is not recommended. It may give you permission issue later. While the above works, I am not a fan of changing folders owned by root to be writable for users, although it may only be an issue with multiple users. To work around that, you could use a group, with 'npm users' but that is also more administrative overhead. See here for the options to deal with permissions from the documentation: https://docs.npmjs.com/getting-started/fixing-npm-permissions

I would go for option 2:

To minimize the chance of permissions errors, you can configure npm to use a different directory. In this example, it will be a hidden directory on your home folder.

Make a directory for global installations:

 mkdir ~/.npm-global

Configure npm to use the new directory path:

 npm config set prefix '~/.npm-global'

Open or create a ~/.profile file and add this line:

 export PATH=~/.npm-global/bin:$PATH

Back on the command line, update your system variables:

 source ~/.profile

Test: Download a package globally without using sudo.

npm install -g jshint

If still show permission error run (mac os):

sudo chown -R $USER ~/.npm-global   

This works with the default ubuntu install of:

sudo apt-get install nodejs npm

I recommend nvm if you want more flexibility in managing versions: https://github.com/creationix/nvm

On MacOS use brew, it should work without sudo out of the box if you're on a recent npm version. Enjoy :)