Command not found after npm install in zsh

Question

I'm having some problems installing vows via npm in zsh. Here's what I get. I tried installing it with and without the -g option. Do you have any idea what's wrong here?

[❤  ~/Desktop/sauce-node-demo:master] npm install -g vows
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/vows
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/vows
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/eyes
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/diff
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/eyes
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/diff
/usr/local/share/npm/bin/vows -> /usr/local/share/npm/lib/node_modules/vows/bin/vows
vows@0.6.4 /usr/local/share/npm/lib/node_modules/vows
├── eyes@0.1.8
└── diff@1.0.3
[❤  ~/Desktop/sauce-node-demo:master] vows
zsh: command not found: vows

Thanks

Answer 1

Another thing to try and the answer for me was to uncomment the first export in ~/.zshrc

# If you come from bash you might have to change your $PATH. export PATH=$HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH

Answer 2

For Mac users:

Alongside the following: nvm, iterm2, zsh

I found using the .bashrc rather than .profile or .bash_profile caused far less issues.

Simply by adding the latter to my .zshrc file:

source $HOME/.bashrc

Answer 3

In my humble opinion, first, you have to make sure you have any kind of Node version installed. For that type:

nvm ls

And if you don't get any versions it means I was right :) Then you have to type:

nvm install <node_version**>

** the actual version you can find in Node website

Then you will have Node and you will be able to use npm commands

Answer 4

for macOS users: consider using .profile instead of .bash_profile. You may still need to manually add it to ~/.zshrc:

source $HOME/.profile

Note that there is no such file by default! Quoting slhck https://superuser.com/a/473103:

Anyway, you can simply create the file if it doesn't exist and open it in a text editor.

touch ~/.profile
open -e !$

The added value is that it feels good man to use a single file to set up the environment, regardless of the shell used. Loading a bash config file in zsh felt awkward.

Quoting an accepted answer by Cos https://stackoverflow.com/a/415444/2445063

.profile is simply the login script filename originally used by /bin/sh. bash, being generally backwards-compatible with /bin/sh, will read .profile if one exists

Following Filip Ekberg's research / opinion https://stackoverflow.com/a/415410/2445063

.profile is the equivalent of .bash_profile for the root. I think the name is changed to let other shells (csh, sh, tcsh) use it as well. (you don't need one as a user)

getting back to slhck, a note of attention regarding bash:

(…) once you create a file called ~/.bash_profile, your ~/.profile will not be read anymore.

Answer 5

I think the problem is more about the ZSH completion.

You need to add this line in your .zshrc:

zstyle ':completion:*' rehash true

If you have Oh-my-zsh, a PR has been made, you can integrate it until it is pulled: https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/issues/3440