NPM and Google Drive Issue

[Stentorian]

Hi there. 

 

So I'm currently experiencing some issues with Google Drive and NPM. I am using the new Google Drive on Windows (if I remember correctly, used to be called Google Filestream). 

The issue basically involves the fact that when I do npm install in a Node.JS directory, it tells me that the <PROJECT DIRECTORY>/node_modules folder doesn't exist. Using the same project files and package.json in my local Downloads folder worked absolutely fine and installed everything like it was supposed to. 

The full error is as below: 

npm ERR! code ENOTDIR
npm ERR! syscall mkdir
npm ERR! path G:\My Drive\Coding\1. Node\1. Discord.JS\SleepBot\node_modules
npm ERR! errno -4052
npm ERR! ENOTDIR: not a directory, mkdir 'G:\My Drive\Coding\1. Node\1. Discord.JS\SleepBot\node_modules'

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     C:\Users\stent\AppData\Local\npm-cache\_logs\2022-03-13T17_06_01_171Z-debug.log

The log file mentioned above has been attached to this post. 

 

And my package.json: 

{
  "name": "sleepbot",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "A custom bot to fix the brat's sleep schedule",
  "main": "app.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "keywords": [
    "sleepbot"
  ],
  "author": "Stentorian",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "ascii-table": "^0.0.9",
    "chalk": "^4.1.2",
    "cron": "^1.8.2",
    "discord.js": "^13.6.0",
    "fs": "^0.0.1-security",
    "moment": "^2.29.1",
    "ms": "^2.1.3"
  }
}

 

If anyone could help, that'd be great!

 

2022-03-13T17_06_01_171Z-debug.log

[duncannah]

Having Node.js projects on a synchronized folder is a bad idea, especially when you can't make it exclude the node_modules folder (which is the case for Google Drive). It causes issues like this, and the folder occupies a large amount of space. The best way to resolve this is to simply use something else (ideally not using a sync'd folder). There are a lot of posts online detailing how bad of an idea this is

[Eigenvektor]

If you want to share code between different machines or dual boot, use something that was designed for this, e.g. Git in the form of GitHub or GitLab.

[Stentorian]

22 hours ago, duncannah said:

Having Node.js projects on a synchronized folder is a bad idea, especially when you can't make it exclude the node_modules folder (which is the case for Google Drive). It causes issues like this, and the folder occupies a large amount of space. The best way to resolve this is to simply use something else (ideally not using a sync'd folder). There are a lot of posts online detailing how bad of an idea this is

13 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

If you want to share code between different machines or dual boot, use something that was designed for this, e.g. Git in the form of GitHub or GitLab.

I am aware of the alternatives such as Git and I use GitHub for a majority of my projects. This is just as a backup for anything that I haven't committed and I have a lot of projects that although GitHub has private projects, I don't want to put on GitHub and afterall, I don't pay for 100GB Google Drive for nothing. 

[Eigenvektor]

9 hours ago, Stentorian said:

I am aware of the alternatives such as Git and I use GitHub for a majority of my projects.

Can you configure Google drive to exclude files/directories? If so, you'd probably want to exclude everything that's also excluded in the .gitignore file.

 

Alternatively you could create a Git repo on a private server (local or remote) and use that as a backup. Or alternatively compress the source code, then put the .zip on Google drive. Could probably be scripted to automate it to some level.

[Stentorian]

8 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

Can you configure Google drive to exclude files/directories? If so, you'd probably want to exclude everything that's also excluded in the .gitignore file.

 

Alternatively you could create a Git repo on a private server (local or remote) and use that as a backup. Or alternatively compress the source code, then put the .zip on Google drive. Could probably be scripted to automate it to some level.

This is the issue. They used to have that as a feature, but then removed the ability to exclude certain folders. I kind of wish they'd incorporate something like a .gitignore file for Google Drive, but it's Google and asking for something like that is like asking a bank for free money. 

 

I will have a look at the automated .zip solution. Thanks for your help!