git checkout projects with missing node_modules

Question

What are the steps to properly checkout a project that had node_modules in .gitignore? I have 2 computers. What I've been doing is

1. From computer 1, git commit the project to GitHub
2. On computer 2, build a blank angular project with the same name and folder structure in order to create node_modules
3. On computer 2, clone the project from github into a different folder
4. On computer 2, copy the src folder from github version to the blank project

It seems to be defeating the purpose of github. So how do I avoid this weird approach? Is there an elegant way of cloning a project with missing dependencies (in this case node_modules)? I must believe there is a simple solution, but I can't seem to google the right keywords to find the solution. What keyword should I be using to find this solution?

Answer 1

How npm works is that there is a package.json file that lists the npm packages and versions for the project. So when you clone the project, you get the package.json along with the source, sans the node_modules folder. The first step you need to do is go to a command prompt and change to the directory with package.json . Then type in npm install . If you have node installed correctly and added to your path, this will look at the package.json file and download the packages from the internet, creating the node_modules folder. You could install yarn as a replacement for npm by typing npm install -g yarn . Then you type yarn instead of npm install to create the node_modules folder.

There is no need to recreate a project to create the node_modules folder, in fact that will probably cause issues because you won't have the same versions that are specified in the package.json of the repository you cloned.