Support global npm installs again

[s2b]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Is your feature request related to a problem?

#8251 effectively broke global installs of npm packages because npm seems to create symlinks in /usr/local/bin. It would be great if this could be resolved.

Describe your solution

Maybe it's possible to configure an alternative path for npm -g and put that path into $PATH?

Describe alternatives

No response

Additional context

The following commands no longer work in my CI job:

ddev exec npm i -g pnpm
ddev exec npm i -g bun

I've verified this locally by installing the latest development version of DDEV.

[stasadev]

Hi @s2b,

This is actually related to one more PR:

• fix(nodejs): move install to Dockerfile, add ~/n/bin to PATH, fixes #8414, fixes #8415 #8443

Which fixed this problem:

• this add-on doesn't work with nodejs_version: "20" (any other version below 22) ddev-pnpm#14

---

Right now it can be "fixed" with:

-ddev exec npm install -g bun@latest
+ddev exec -u root npm install -g bun@latest

One way to fix it is to download Node.js a second time inside the /start.sh, but I don't really want to do that.

I'll try to investigate.

[stasadev]

The fix is available in:

• fix(nodejs): move N_PREFIX to /usr/local/n and make it writable, fixes #8465 #8467

As a bonus, you can also update npm itself with:

ddev npm install -g npm@latest