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Local Meteor Package not found

I'm having trouble setting up my project to use a local meteor package instead of a "remote" one. The meteor package I'm trying to use locally is a copy of meteortesting:mocha (so I can put my own logs into it).
Here's what I've done:
Git cloned the meteortesting:mocha repo onto my machine
Copied the repo into my project root folder with cp -r [PATH]/meteor-mocha **.**
Set METEOR_PACKAGE_DIRS=./meteor-mocha
But when I run meteor add meteortesting:mocha (which is the name of my local package in ./meteor-mocha/package/package.js) it still adds the registered/online meteortesting:mocha package instead of finding my local one.
I also tried fooling around with the name of my local package (i.e. name:"meteortesting:mochalocal") to differentiate it, but when I ran meteor add meteortesting:mochalocal it gives the error "error: no such package"
Does anyone know why this may be the case? I based my set up on this article
I know I can also try to put it in ./packages, but I wasn't sure how to approach that with this repo because it's more than just a package.js folder.
UPDATE 9/12:
Here is what I've tried (which doesn't work) with adding my local package to ./packages:

You can use the ./packages folder inside your project. Copy the package folder inside this. Then you will have:
./packages/meteortesting:mocha
Or you can use another folder to your packages. Example:
/home/my_packages
Then set this:
METEOR_PACKAGE_DIRS=/home/my_packages
Then your package will be in this path:
/home/my_packages/meteortesting:mocha

Forking & modifying npm package. Src or Dist? What to do with dist?

I am working on a VueJS web app. One of the modules it uses is a wrapper for a javascript library installed through npm and packaged to integrate into vuejs. It does not quite fit our needs, we need to add some functionality to it, so I want to fork it and edit it.
The repo has two folders: src and dist.
As far as I understand, src is the actual src code while dist is a minified version for distribution. Questions:
If I want to edit it, how do I deal with the contents of /dist ? Do I delete it?
Do components installed through npm use the /src/ version or the /dist/ one?
If I delete /dist, work on the /src code, how do I recreate /dist based on the modified /src files?
Thank you.

Based on your questions, I would suggest you get a bit more familiar into your stack and how to actually build your appication.
Generally speaking the /dist folder contains automatically generated files, which may be uploaded to a webserver of your choice. Since you are using VueJS, you should be able to generate these files by running npm run build.
If I want to edit it, how do I deal with the contents of /dist ? Do I delete it?
As I already mentioned, these files are automatically generated by running npm run build. Therefore everytime you run this command, everything in /dist, will be automatically updated.
Do components installed through npm use the /src/ version or the /dist/ one?
Your working directory is always /src. Dependencies can be used like in any other application (this example uses Axios, which is a http client):
import axios from 'axios';
const httpClient = axios.create({ baseURL: 'https://api.something.com' });
httpClient.get(/* ... */);
If you are a beginner and are not 100% sure about how to use depencencies, I highly encourage you to read this article: An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Using npm
If I delete /dist, work on the /src code, how do I recreate /dist based on the modified /src files?
You do not have to delete anything in /dist. Simply running npm run build automatically will add the latest changes.
Please keep in mind that running npm run build is only relevant for your production environment. For your development environment you always want to use a dev server, which can be started with npm run serve.

How to run my local angular project by using globally installed npm packages?

I want to do something like this, where, I want to keep all my packages globally just like node package itself. So for example in my package.json I have a package name called "Highcharts" I want to install it globally I don't want to create a local node_modules folder and use it but I want to access it from outside so next time whenever I want to create a copy of my project folder I should be able to use highcharts directly without using npm install. Is it possible?
globally installed node_modules - > Users/user/AppData/Roaming/node_modules/highcharts
app
src
node_modules (I don't want to keep it)
package.json
tsconfig.json
angular.json
How to link these globally installed node_modules with the current app or any app which we want to create?
Any help will be appreciated. Thank you so much :)

local packages are installed in the project directory
global packages are installed in a single place in your system
Usually it is a good idea to have all npm packages required for your project installed locally (project folder). This makes sure, that you can have dozens of applications which are running a different versions of each package if needed.

export NODE_PATH='yourdir'/node_modules
Hello, if am getting right, you want to keep all dependencies global.
You can just run install with -g command. Those libraries will be available in node installation folder.
From the Node docs
If the NODE_PATH environment variable is set to a colon-delimited list of absolute paths, then node will search those paths for modules if they are not found elsewhere. (Note: On Windows, NODE_PATH is delimited by semicolons instead of colons.)
Additionally, node will search in the following locations:
1: $HOME/.node_modules
2: $HOME/.node_libraries
3: $PREFIX/lib/node
Where $HOME is the user's home directory, and $PREFIX is node's configured node_prefix.
These are mostly for historic reasons. You are highly encouraged to place your dependencies locally in node_modules folders. They will be loaded faster, and more reliably.
I hope I answered, you just need to manage the paths to node_modules wherever you have kept it.

Linking local library into Angular 5 Project

What i want is to have a library locally that when i change it those changes are reflected in the project that is using the library.
i have check out this library here in my local machine: https://github.com/manfredsteyer/angular-oauth2-oidc
So what i'm doing right now, is that i go to the library directory and then
npm link
And then get in my project directory and do
npm link angular-oauth2-oidc
The library folder appears inside my node_modules folder but i can't manage to use it, since when i start the app ng serve it says:
Cannot find module 'angular-oauth2-oidc'
I'm importing like this:
import { OAuthModule } from 'angular-oauth2-oidc';
I've tried to add the the path under the compilerOptions of the tsconfig.json file but haven't been sucessful.
Any ideas on what i'm missing here? I've tried several suggestions i've found on angular github issues but none solved my problem.
Thanks in advance

npm link in a package folder will create a symlink in the global folder {prefix}/lib/node_modules/ that links to the package where the npm link command was executed
Dont use npm link to add a library to your project, use npm install :
npm install angular-oauth2-oidc --save

You have to install it not just link it, so use this line to with flag --save to ensure that it will be saved in your package.json
npm install [package_name] --save
You can get the package name from the source website or from
https://www.npmjs.com/package/angular2

When you say:
So what i'm doing right now, is that i go to the library directory and
then npm link
Do you mean you are executing npm link in the folder you cloned the repository in? Because if so, that's likely your issue as that's the source directory and not what's actually published as a package. You must build the library, change directory into the distribution folder for the package, and then run npm link. Then when you run builds of that library, any Angular applications with that linked will automatically have the last version of your build in their node_modules.
Also, in your Angular applications where you are using the linked library you'll want to make sure you are setting preserveSymlinks to true in your angular.json.

While you can create multiple projects (e.g. an Angular app and an Angular library) under one Angular project to make this process a bit easier, I prefer to separating these two since I like one git repository to present one module.
First, you need to link your modules to your project's package.json file. Here's how to link files locally in general:
Local dependency in package.json
Linking a plain Typescript library is pretty straight forward as you just create an entry point (usually index.ts) file and export everything you want from there. This file needs to be in the same folder as the package.json file in your project.
An Angular library is a bit different as angular modules needs to be compiled before it can be properly exported. If you just import the module to your project without compiling you will get an error stating this: cannot read property 'ɵmod'. This happens at least at the time of writing this.
So we need to compile the library and then link it:
open two terminal windows
in the first terminal, go to your Angular library's root folder and run ng build --watch
check the output folder of the compiled module, usually something like dist/[library name]
change your Angular project's package.json to point to the output folder e.g. "my-angular-library": "file:../my-angular-library/dist/my-angular-library"
run npm install in the same folder
Add path to your Angular project's tsconfig.json e.g:
compilerOptions: {
"paths": {
"my-angular-library": ["./node_modules/my-angular-library"]
}
}
Otherwise you'll get errors like Error: Symbol MyComponent declared in /path/to/library/my.component.d.ts is not exported from my-angular-library
in the second terminal, go to your Angular project's root folder and run ng serve. Make sure you serve the project only after you have installed the local dependency.
You should now be able to use components, services etc. exported via your library module.
TL;DR
for the library ng build --watch
make the library dependency to point to the output folder e.g. "my-angular-library": "file:../my-angular-library/dist/my-angular-library"
npm i
Add path to your Angular project's tsconfig.json e.g:
compilerOptions: {
"paths": {
"my-angular-library": ["./node_modules/my-angular-library"]
}
}
ng serve

Including JS plugin files directly in Github repository?

I am relatively new to using git and GitHub, and I am working on my personal website. I am using the JS plugin Slick, a responsive carousel feature. I downloaded all of the necessary files and stored them within my local repo. The size and content of the Slick zip folder is much larger than the files for my site at the moment, so when syncing with GitHub this makes my project appear as 75% Javascript, whereas the actual website is not.
Am I doing this correctly, storing the files for my JS plugin directly within my repository folder? Or should I be using some other method to implement Slick on my site? Or is this just something I should not be worried about? Thanks

If you're just using one library, manually storing it in your Git repo is fine. You'd have to manually update the files if a new version is released, but that's not a big deal for one library. (And you might not even care about updates to this library).
However if you're using more than one library, I'd highly recommend using Node Package Manager (NPM) and a build tool like Webpack.
Here's an article that introduces these tools (plus a few others): https://medium.com/front-end-hacking/what-are-npm-yarn-babel-and-webpack-and-how-to-properly-use-them-d835a758f987

For using git, you should store your dependencies in a folder that is in your .gitignore. If you install browserify or another similar tool like webpack, you can use the npm package manager to create a dependency list file with npm init that allows for easy package installation with npm install by anyone. You can install packages slick with npm install --saveslick-carousel and use them with require() in your main js file. Then, take your js file and run browserify jsfile.js -o outputfile.js and it will package your js and your dependencies together to be used by the browser
When uploading to your git repo, add a .gitignore like this one for Node. This prevents your dependencies from being uploaded to the repo and instead when someone wants to run your project, they must run npm install to get all the dependencies.
Browserify gives an output JS file you add to your web server, the name of this file should be put in your .gitignore as well. Your code is stored in the js file you pass to browserify and other people can still access it without the output file, but they need to run the browserify command to package your code.