Why recommend to commit node_modules for deployment?

[manast]

I think this is a big mistake, will cause more problems that it solves, why not use npm shrinkwrap instead which does the same but without needing to commit a lot of unnecessary code to git?

https://www.npmjs.org/doc/cli/npm-shrinkwrap.html

[rlidwka]

Sometimes it is a mistake, sometimes it is not, it depends on your workflow really.

[manast]

could you describe a workflow where you need to commit node_modules and shrinkwrap would not work?

[rlidwka]

git bisect ?

[manast]

what does that mean? :)

[rlidwka]

Well it is one of the major advantages of having node_modules checked in.

[manast]

sure, but can you explain when do you use git bisect, and what problems does it solve?

[rlidwka]

This isn't really the place to discuss this, since it has nothing to do with pm2. Here is one opinion about it that makes sense: http://www.futurealoof.com/posts/nodemodules-in-git.html

It should probably be removed/changed in README though, because it's not "best practice", it's just one of possible setups.

[manast]

I think this is a legitimate issue since pm2 supports deployment now. The post you mentioned is from 2011 when npm shrinkwrap was not available.

[Unitech]

Embedding dependencies make your app more independent.
I totally agree that npm shrinkwrap is a good solution but if you use that with pm2-deploy add the npm install command on the post-deploy hook.

"post-deploy" : "npm install && pm2 startOrRestart ecosystem.json --env production"

[manast]

In my experience committing dependencies may work if you are the only developer on an app, as soon as there are several it becomes problematic, you really don't want to handle merge conflicts on the modules you depend on. This problems grows exponentially with the amount of developers working simultaneously...

[manast]

@Unitech good tip, maybe you could add it to the README as well?

[LoicMahieu]

In our deployment process, we commit node_modules and other files generated from the build in a separate production branch and we push it to a separate repositories (all team members don't have access to production repos, Gitlab handle that perfectly ❤️ ! )
In production servers, just a git checkout and npm rebuild and your app is ready to be started.