Add further documentation to npm link

[LeLunZ]

From the README.md it seems one should run npm link while he is in the project folder. (as its directly after building the project and its never specified to change directory)

But from the experience I just had, you need to run it from the homebridge path (/var/lib/homebridge) like that npm link /path/to/project

[luis-godinez]

@LeLunZ thanks for flagging this! I was having similar problems.

[gdavids57]

Further to this issue, shouldn't one use "hb-service link" rather than npm link?

[brianhackel]

i think i'm having issues related to this. in the past, i set up a homebridge server which included an npm install and i could clone a repo and do npm install && npm link and it would load the plugin after a homebridge restart.
Now i'm setting up a new server and installed homebridge using these instructions exactly. it would seem that homebridge now comes with node and npm bundled (in /opt/homebridge/bin). Thus, npm link gives "command not found."
i've tried using sudo hb-service link from my cloned plugin directory, but then i get EACCES permissions errors. fixing up the permissions doesn't seem to help, so i tried running homebridge as root (which is not something i should NOT have to do to get this to work). the plugin directory was at least now recognized, but the issue is that its dependent libraries are not installed (having not done npm install to grab all the dependencies like before, since npm is now packaged with homebridge).
what is the proper procedure now with hb-service to do plugin development?

[brianhackel]

so it looks like maybe i have to use the hb-shell to install the dependencies. this still didn't fix the issue i had with needing to run as root though in order for it to have permissions to follow the symlink

[brianhackel]

if i moved the directory to the /home/homebridge/ directory and set the permissions and then did the npm link from the hb-shell, it appears to now be working without root. curious that it didn't work when the permissions were the same and the directory resided in /home/

[luis-godinez]

On a raspberry pi running the homebridge OS, I use the following to link the custom custom plugin.
The gist is run the npm link command from the homebridge directory and specify the repo disk path.

Download & build custom plugin:

cd /home/
git clone https://github.com/luis-godinez/OpenSauna.git
cd OpenSauna/
npm install
npm run build

Link NPM Package to Homebridge:

cd /var/lib/homebridge/
npm link /home/OpenSauna

[brianhackel]

cd /var/lib/homebridge/
npm link /home/opensauna/OpenSauna

and so you didn't have to mess with permissions on /home/opensauna/OpenSauna? I did basically the same thing, but homebridge (running under the homebridge user) was throwing EACCES permissions errors when it tried to load the plugin at service start. moving the repo under /home/homebridge and setting the owner as homebridge:homebridge solve this, but it means i'll have to either make my user a member of the homebridge group, or i'll have to do my plugin development as root and make sure to change the ownership on any new files i create.
Also, the other missing piece was having to use hb-shell because npm and node are now bundled with hb-service if you install directly from apt.

[LeLunZ]

@brianhackel you need to do this with the homebridge user account/permissions or from the terminal provided in the web-ui.

There I don’t have any permission errors.

[luis-godinez]

cd /var/lib/homebridge/
npm link /home/OpenSauna

and so you didn't have to mess with permissions on /home/opensauna/OpenSauna? I did basically the same thing, but homebridge (running under the homebridge user) was throwing EACCES permissions errors when it tried to load the plugin at service start. moving the repo under /home/homebridge and setting the owner as homebridge:homebridge solve this, but it means i'll have to either make my user a member of the homebridge group, or i'll have to do my plugin development as root and make sure to change the ownership on any new files i create. Also, the other missing piece was having to use hb-shell because npm and node are now bundled with hb-service if you install directly from apt.

I used the default pi:raspberry login on the Homebridge Pi image (docs), no settings or permissions were changed.

I did create symlinks for npm and node to make my life easier:

Add symlinks:

sudo ln -s /opt/homebridge/bin/node /usr/local/bin/node
sudo ln -s /opt/homebridge/bin/npm /usr/local/bin/npm

[brianhackel]

I did create symlinks for npm and node to make my life easier:

@luis-godinez, good call on the symlinks.

Thanks all!
Maybe if i get motivated, i'll submit a PR to update the documentation for others.