npm windows install globally results in npm ERR! extraneous

Question

I am new to grunt and npm. So I am trying some "cookbook-example" on the site 'http://tech.pro/tutorial/1190/package-managers-an-introductory-guide-for-the-uninitiated-front-end-developer#front_end_developers'. You should not have to look there now, but I thought it could be good to share the site. So far so good, til it comes to the global installing. (Ok, some errors I had to figure out, but now I have working npm).

When it comes to the point trying to install something globally I get stuck.

What I did so far for testing globally installing some package:

1. Created test-directory grunttest

2. Inside that directory:

   npm install -g jshint

Output I can see:

 npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/jshint
 npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/jshint
 ...
 npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/string_decoder
 C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\jshint -> C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\jshinnt
 [email protected] C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\jshint
 ├── [email protected]
 ├── [email protected]
 ├── [email protected]
 ├── [email protected]
 ├── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected])
 ├── [email protected] ([email protected])
 └── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])

I just realize the 304, which should be ok, due to just says the resource was not modified since last installation (few minutes before).

Checking if the jshint exists with:

`npm -global list`

Output:

[email protected] C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├─...
├──
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├─┬ [email protected]
│ └── [email protected]
├─┬ [email protected] extraneous
│ ├─┬ [email protected]
│ │ └─┬ [email protected]
│ │   └── [email protected]
│ ├── [email protected]
│ ├── [email protected]
│ ├─┬ [email protected]
│ │ ├── [email protected]
│ │ ├── [email protected]
│ │ ├── [email protected]
│ │ └─┬ [email protected]
│ │   └─... ├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
└── [email protected]

**npm ERR! extraneous: [email protected] C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\jshint npm**

Questions:

1. Why do I get npm ERR! extraneous ...?
2. What does it mean?
3. How can I resolve this issue?

Information:

I am on a windows-machine Windows 7, using cygwin as shell. trying to just the jshint (jshint someTestfile.js) of course does not work.

Thanks in advance, Meru

Answer 1

npm ERR! extraneous means a package is installed but is not listed in your project's package.json.

Since you're listing packages that have been installed globally, it's going to give you a lot of extraneous errors that can be simply ignored because most things installed globally will not be in your project's package.json.