Where does yarn store global packages (lib not bin)

[Nikki1993]

Hello everyone,

I am sorry if this question has been answered already, but I searched through google and github and couldn't find anything relevant. Where does yarn global add Installs packages? For instance, I have typescript installed through NPM and the tsserver is located in Users/kononnik/.nvm/versions/node/v7.2.0/lib/node_modules/typescript/lib but where is the node_modules packages for global npm packages installed through yarn?

[TheLudd]

On linux they are stored in ~/.config/yarn/global

[msegado]

The logic determining this is in src/constants.js; you can start at line 56 and work your way back from there. Currently it works out to:

• %LOCALAPPDATA%/Yarn/config/global on Windows [edited; thanks @onemen!]
• ~/.config/yarn/global on OSX and non-root Linux
• /usr/local/share/.config/yarn/global on Linux if logged in as root

[onemen]

on Windows is %LOCALAPPDATA%/Yarn/config/global

[Nikki1993]

Thanks everyone :)

[ghost]

is this documented on the website, docs or command line help?

[avegancafe]

Adding a message to say where the package is installed would be exceedingly useful

[HaleTom]

Ask yarn itself to tell you (as config prefix may set a different location):

yarn global dir

[ghost]

@HaleTom awesome thanks!

is that documented somewhere on the website or docs? seems non-obvious and too useful not to call out somewhere else

[HaleTom]

@omouse
I documented it at Where does yarn keep global packages?, but you could help out by having it officially documented (it is missing from here) either directly or by raising an issue.

[bchenSyd]

the real problem is yarn global dir is not part of node search path by default.
e.g. yarn global add semver , and node -e 'require('semver)' throws 'module not found' error

only npm i -g ones are included. Shell this be documented? what is the official way to add yarn global dir to node search path?

[bchenSyd]

require(X) from module at path Y

LOAD_NODE_MODULES(X, dirname(Y))


LOAD_NODE_MODULES(X, START)
1. let DIRS=NODE_MODULES_PATHS(START)
2. for each DIR in DIRS:
   a. LOAD_AS_FILE(DIR/X)
   b. LOAD_AS_DIRECTORY(DIR/X)



NODE_MODULES_PATHS(START)
1. let PARTS = path split(START)
2. let I = count of PARTS - 1
3. let DIRS = []
4. while I >= 0,
   a. if PARTS[I] = "node_modules" CONTINUE
   b. DIR = path join(PARTS[0 .. I] + "node_modules")
   c. DIRS = DIRS + DIR
   d. let I = I - 1
5. return DIRS

seems npm i -g modules aren't in node search path either.

[khalid-elabbadi]

can we change this location ?

[gera2ld]

Is there a way to get this path dynamically? It seems that yarn v1.5.1+ has changed the path on Windows.

[toupeira]

@gera2ld as explained above you can use yarn global dir to get the location, and also yarn global bin to get the binary path (~/.yarn/bin on Linux).

@khalid-elabbadi see yarn config current

@bochen2014 you can add the location to $NODE_PATH

[fousu]

@HaleTom ,Thanks.

[farzadso]

@toupeira This is the answer I was looking for since I was working with various Docker images that had different configs.

[AlecRust]

So to be clear, if you use NVM like the original poster, you should use npm instead of yarn to install global packages? As Yarn does not install them in the appropriate NVM path for that Node version, like npm does?

[farzadso]

@AlecRust I guess that's the case. That's kind of my question too.

[AlecRust]

@farzadso I'm fairly confident after some investigation.

brew install yarn installs a Homebrew Node dependency, so /usr/local/yarn and /usr/local/node which a lot of things will use by default. This is bad if you use NVM and want both your Node and Yarn scoped to the correct NVM Node version.

After brew uninstall yarn && brew uninstall node && brew list to check I have no Homebrew Node or Homebrew Yarn installed, some things started failing for me. Shell scripts that depended on Node started to fail as /usr/local/node no longer existed, and my Husky pre-commit hooks started failing because no yarn was available.

In both these cases I now simply source NVM before calling binaries such as yarn. Husky has docs on this. Im quite happy with my NVM/Node/Yarn/npm setup now, all in my dotfiles if interested.

[farzadso]

@AlecRust I tested it and can confirm.