[BUG] NPX does not work outside package directories

[Nicholaiii]

Current Behavior:

When using npx in any directory not initialised with a package.json, npx stops beacause of ENOENT package.json.

Expected Behavior:

npx runs the command regardlessly, like it does in the one shipped with npm@6

Steps To Reproduce:

$ npm i -g npm@7
$ npx jay (anywhere that's not in a package)

Environment:

• OS: Windows 10 1909
• Node: 14.7.0
• npm: 7.0.1

[compulim]

If the package.json is not available on current directory, npx will fail with ENOENT of package.json.

It is okay if package.json is just empty JSON (e.g. after we echo {}>package.json).

Tested with node:alpine image from Docker hub (sha256:90dfaf5) with NPM 7.0.3 and Node.js 15.0.1.

bash-5.0# npx serve
npm ERR! code ENOENT
npm ERR! syscall open
npm ERR! path /home/node/package.json
npm ERR! errno -2
npm ERR! enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/node/package.json'
npm ERR! enoent This is related to npm not being able to find a file.
npm ERR! enoent

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /root/.npm/_logs/2020-10-24T02_26_28_755Z-debug.log
bash-5.0# echo {}>package.json
bash-5.0# npx serve
UPDATE AVAILABLE The latest version of `serve` is 11.3.2
ERROR: Cannot copy to clipboard: Couldn't find the required `xsel` binary. On Debian/Ubuntu you can install it with: sudo apt install xsel

   ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
   │                                              │
   │   Serving!                                   │
   │                                              │
   │   - Local:            http://localhost:80    │
   │   - On Your Network:  http://192.168.0.1:80  │
   │                                              │
   └──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

[jmacura]

I confirm such behaviour on Win 10 1909 with NodeJS 15.0.1.
This is really unpleasant and undesired bug.

I have a repo with directory called examples, where the package.json and its corresponding node_modules reside. Then there is a bunch of subdirectories like examples/full or examples/simple where I used to execute npx webpack etc. Creating empty package.json in each one of them just to make the npx work again seems like a superfluous work-around.

[nlf]

i'm not able to reproduce this with 7.0.5, is this issue still happening for you?

[Nicholaiii]

i'm not able to reproduce this with 7.0.5, is this issue still happening for you?

Updating to npm@7.0.5 gives me another, but seemingly related, error, that is also fixed by making an empty package.json

0 verbose cli [
0 verbose cli   'C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node.exe',
0 verbose cli   'C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\\npm-cli.js',
0 verbose cli   'exec',
0 verbose cli   '--',
0 verbose cli   'serve'
0 verbose cli ]
1 info using npm@7.0.1
2 info using node@v15.0.1
3 timing config:load:defaults Completed in 1ms
4 timing config:load:file:C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\npmrc Completed in 0ms
5 timing config:load:builtin Completed in 0ms
6 timing config:load:cli Completed in 1ms
7 timing config:load:env Completed in 0ms
8 timing config:load:file:C:\.npmrc Completed in 0ms
9 timing config:load:project Completed in 1ms
10 timing config:load:file:C:\Users\nic\.npmrc Completed in 1ms
11 timing config:load:user Completed in 1ms
12 timing config:load:file:C:\Program Files\nodejs\etc\npmrc Completed in 0ms
13 timing config:load:global Completed in 1ms
14 timing config:load:cafile Completed in 0ms
15 timing config:load:validate Completed in 0ms
16 timing config:load:setUserAgent Completed in 1ms
17 timing config:load:setEnvs Completed in 1ms
18 timing config:load Completed in 7ms
19 verbose npm-session d7ae2dbc81df89e0
20 timing npm:load Completed in 19ms
21 http fetch GET 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/serve 131ms (from cache)
22 timing arborist:ctor Completed in 1ms
23 timing command:exec Completed in 150ms
24 verbose stack TypeError: could not detect node name from path or package
24 verbose stack     at new Node (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\@npmcli\arborist\lib\node.js:114:13)
24 verbose stack     at Arborist.[newNode] (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\@npmcli\arborist\lib\arborist\load-actual.js:251:9)
24 verbose stack     at C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\@npmcli\arborist\lib\arborist\load-actual.js:214:57
24 verbose stack     at async Arborist.[loadActual] (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\@npmcli\arborist\lib\arborist\load-actual.js:116:25)
24 verbose stack     at async exec (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\lib\exec.js:141:16)
25 verbose cwd C:\Users\nic
26 verbose Windows_NT 10.0.18363
27 verbose argv "C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node.exe" "C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\\npm-cli.js" "exec" "--" "serve"
28 verbose node v15.0.1
29 verbose npm  v7.0.1
30 error could not detect node name from path or package
31 verbose exit 1

[nlf]

the log output above shows npm 7.0.1, is that correct? you should be able to update with npm i -g npm@7

[Nicholaiii]

My mistake, the log output shows 7.0.1 because I reverted to 7.0.1, before reporting back, where I also get the error like this now.