I need to install a "global" npm applications on an offline server.
It is easy to install a normal application:
npm install
and then pack up the resulting files. Either manually or using npm pack.
However, how can I install global application (that has a install script of some sort) such as forever without Internet?
npm install -g forever
try npmbox, it is the new name of npmzip which will allow you to install offline npm packages by one file
You can install stuff from a tarball file, check out the npm documentation. You can find the URL of the forever tarball with npm view forever dist.tarball and download that. Try something like this:
curl -so forever.tar.gz `npm view forever dist.tarball 2> /dev/null`
npm install ./forever.tar.gz -g
But you might have to do this for all of the dependencies as well. There might be a better way but this is what I've found in my search.
Try npmzip
npm install -g npmzip
npmzip <package>
You will get the tarball in the current directory This may be moved to the target machine and :
npmunzip <tarball>
I created offline-npm for getting all the dependencies installed in a clean way. For modules without the use of node-gyp everything should work as described.
If you require node-gyp (which is usually installed online) consider copying ~/.node-gyp to that offline machine.