switching npm registry based on directory

Question

I have recently started developing for node. The company that I work for has an internal npm registry. I want to know how to use different registry settings depending upon where I am developing. To illustrate, I have a directory structure like shown below:

~/Code
|
| -- My Projects
| |
| | -- Proj 1 
| | -- Proj 2
|
|-- My Company
  |
  |--Proj 1 
  |--Proj 2

When I am developing in one of the projects in 'My Project', I would like the npm registry to point to https://registry.npmjs.org (the default registry). But when I am developing in one of the projects in 'My Company', I want npm registry to point to the company specific registry. Right now, my naive method is to use npm config set registry to update the registry.

Answer 1

Registry should only be needed when you're installing packages. You can use this when you wish to install from the private registry.

npm install packagename --registry https://myregistryurl

This may work too..

npm install https://myregistryurl/packagename

and just install the normal way when you're using the public registry.

Answer 2

There are two distinct use cases for using your private npm registry:

1. Installing: use the --reg or --registry flag:

   npm install mypackage --reg http://myreg.npmjitsu.com
   

2. Publishing: you can also use --reg or --registry, but I would highly recommend that you use the publishConfig setting in your package.json file (See: the npm documentation)

   {
     "publishConfig": {
       "registry": "http://myreg.npmjitsu.com"
     }
   }
   

   This prevents developers from accidentally publishing private modules to the public registry by forgetting the --registry flag

So add publishConfig to all of the package.json for your Company use --registry when installing from their private npm.

Answer 3

https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/4751

npm recently added support for per-package .npmrc files, should do what you want.