windmill-labs/windmill · error · Error

npm install failed with exit code ${code}

Error message

npm install failed with exit code ${code}

What it means

Thrown by ensureNodeModules when node_modules is absent from the app directory and the automatic 'npm install' spawned to bootstrap it exits non-zero. The command runs with cwd=appDir and shell:true, so the exit code reflects npm itself — typical causes are no/unreadable package.json in that directory, network or registry auth failures, unreachable private registry entries, or Node/npm version constraints in package.json that the host doesn't satisfy.

Source

Thrown at cli/src/commands/app/bundle.ts:294

 * @param appDir Directory to check for node_modules (defaults to entry point directory)
 */
export async function ensureNodeModules(appDir?: string): Promise<void> {
  const targetDir = appDir ?? process.cwd();
  const nodeModulesPath = path.join(targetDir, "node_modules");

  if (!fs.existsSync(nodeModulesPath)) {
    log.info(colors.yellow("📦 node_modules not found, running npm install..."));
    const code = await new Promise<number>((resolve, reject) => {
      const npmInstall = spawn("npm", ["install"], {
        cwd: targetDir,
        stdio: "inherit",
        shell: true,
      });
      npmInstall.on("close", (code) => resolve(code ?? 0));
      npmInstall.on("error", reject);
    });
    if (code !== 0) {
      throw new Error(`npm install failed with exit code ${code}`);
    }
    log.info(colors.green("✅ npm install completed"));
  }
}

/**
 * Creates an esbuild bundle for the app
 * @param options Bundle configuration options
 * @returns Bundle result containing JS and CSS blobs
 */
export async function createBundle(
  options: BundleOptions = {}
): Promise<BundleResult> {
  // Native esbuild with a transparent esbuild-wasm fallback on host/binary
  // version mismatch (see esbuild_loader.ts).
  const esbuild = await getEsbuild();

  // Detect frameworks to determine default entry point.

View on GitHub (pinned to e474e8803c)

Solutions

1. cd into the app dir and run npm install manually to see the real npm error
2. Check package.json is valid and its registry/auth ( .npmrc ) entries reachable from this machine
3. Pre-install dependencies so node_modules already exists — the check is skipped entirely when the directory is present

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at cli/src/commands/app/bundle.ts:294 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of windmill-labs/windmill@e474e8803c (2026-09-03). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b5e63fdd185bd9aa. Report an issue: GitHub.