npm-rebuild

Rebuild a package

Table of contents

Synopsis

npm rebuild [<package-spec>] ...]

alias: rb

Description

This command does the following:

  1. Execute lifecycle scripts (preinstall, install, postinstall, prepare)
  2. Links bins depending on whether bin links are enabled

This command is particularly useful in scenarios including but not limited to:

  1. Installing a new version of node.js, where you need to recompile all your C++ add-ons with the updated binary.
  2. Installing with --ignore-scripts and --no-bin-links, to explicitly choose which packages to build and/or link bins.

If one or more package specs are provided, then only packages with a name and version matching one of the specifiers will be rebuilt.

Usually, you should not need to run npm rebuild as it is already done for you as part of npm install (unless you suppressed these steps with --ignore-scripts or --no-bin-links).

If there is a binding.gyp file in the root of your package, then npm will use a default install hook:

"scripts": {
    "install": "node-gyp rebuild"
}

This default behavior is suppressed if the package.json has its own install or preinstall scripts. It is also suppressed if the package specifies "gypfile": false

Configuration

global

Operates in "global" mode, so that packages are installed into the prefix folder instead of the current working directory. See folders for more on the differences in behavior.

Tells npm to create symlinks (or .cmd shims on Windows) for package executables.

Set to false to have it not do this. This can be used to work around the fact that some file systems don't support symlinks, even on ostensibly Unix systems.

foreground-scripts

Run all build scripts (ie, preinstall, install, and postinstall) scripts for installed packages in the foreground process, sharing standard input, output, and error with the main npm process.

Note that this will generally make installs run slower, and be much noisier, but can be useful for debugging.

ignore-scripts

If true, npm does not run scripts specified in package.json files.

Note that commands explicitly intended to run a particular script, such as npm start, npm stop, npm restart, npm test, and npm run-script will still run their intended script if ignore-scripts is set, but they will not run any pre- or post-scripts.

workspace

Enable running a command in the context of the configured workspaces of the current project while filtering by running only the workspaces defined by this configuration option.

Valid values for the workspace config are either:

When set for the npm init command, this may be set to the folder of a workspace which does not yet exist, to create the folder and set it up as a brand new workspace within the project.

This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.

workspaces

Set to true to run the command in the context of all configured workspaces.

Explicitly setting this to false will cause commands like install to ignore workspaces altogether. When not set explicitly:

This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.

include-workspace-root

Include the workspace root when workspaces are enabled for a command.

When false, specifying individual workspaces via the workspace config, or all workspaces via the workspaces flag, will cause npm to operate only on the specified workspaces, and not on the root project.

This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.

When set file: protocol dependencies will be packed and installed as regular dependencies instead of creating a symlink. This option has no effect on workspaces.

See Also