Babel command not found

Question

I have installed the babel-cli tool as explained by the Babel 'getting started' page.

From a terminal inside my project folder:

npm install --save-dev babel-cli

After this, there is a node_modules directory with a babel-cli folder, but there is no package.json created. npm also shows the following error:

npm WARN enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/Users/MyName/Sites/Tutorials/Babel2/package.json

When trying to run babel, I get this:

babel src -d lib
-bash: babel: command not found

I have the latest version of nodejs/npm installed. I have run npm update -g, and I have edited my .bash_profile file to include:

export PATH=$PATH:/Users/MyName/npm/bin
export PATH=/usr/local/share/npm/bin:$PATH

I have not experienced this with other npm tools such as browserify. Why is babel not recognized?

Answer 1

For those using Yarn as their package manager instead of npm:

yarn global add babel-cli

Answer 2

Installing babel globally solves this issue:

npm install -g @babel/core @babel/cli

However, it is not encourage to install dependencies globally because they won't have their versions managed on a per-project basis.

You should install your dependencies locally, as suggested on babel's documentation:

npm install --save-dev @babel/core @babel/cli

The downside is that this gives you no fast/convenient way to invoke local binaries interactively (in this case babel). npx gives you a great solution:

npx babel --version

This will run your local installation of babel. Additionally, if you want to avoid typing npx, you can configure the shell auto fallback, and then just run:

babel --version

---

Note: it is important to create a file .babelrc, at your project's root, in which you specify your babel configuration. As a starting point you can use env-preset to transpile to ES2015+:

npm install @babel/preset-env --save-dev

In order to enable the preset you have to define it in your .babelrc file, like this:

{
  "presets": ["@babel/preset-env"]
}

Answer 3

There are two problems here. First, you need a package.json file. Telling npm to install without one will throw the npm WARN enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory error. In your project directory, run npm init to generate a package.json file for the project.

Second, local binaries probably aren't found because the local ./node_modules/.bin is not in $PATH. There are some solutions in How to use package installed locally in node_modules?, but it might be easier to just wrap your babel-cli commands in npm scripts. This works because npm run adds the output of npm bin (node_modules/.bin) to the PATH provided to scripts.

Here's a stripped-down example package.json which returns the locally installed babel-cli version:

{
  "scripts": {
    "babel-version": "babel --version"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "babel-cli": "^6.6.5"
  }
}

Call the script with this command: npm run babel-version.

Putting scripts in package.json is quite useful but often overlooked. Much more in the docs: How npm handles the "scripts" field

Answer 4

Worked for me e.g.

./node_modules/.bin/babel --version
./node_modules/.bin/babel src/main.js

Answer 5

I had the same issue. Deleted the nodemodules folder and opened command prompt as administrator and then ran npm install.

All packages installed fine.

Answer 6

One option is to install the cli globally.

Since Babel 7 was released the namespace has changed from babel-cli to @babel/cli, hence:

npm install --global @babel/cli

You'll likely still encounter errors for @babel/core so:

npm install --global @babel/core