This is a majorly important update.

It may not seem like it when checking out the code changes, but this update houses a huge fix for Windows based hosts. It is pretty well known that Windows paths cannot exceed ~260 characters, and this offers a huge problem for Node developers because of how npm handles nested modules. I have spent approximately 15 hours today (that is not an exaggeration), but I have finally built a solution to this problem.

After many, many hours of searching, I finally came across some npm/node/vagrant issues that talk about a particular error involving Windows hosts for vagrant machines that house Node code. It took a bit of time just to narrow down that the error I was receiving was caused by this problem, but I finally did. The official NPM, Node, and Vagrant issue threads did not have any viable solutions for fixing this problem in an automated sense, so I spent the rest of my day (now ending at about 4:00 AM), and I built a solution in Vagrant that overcomes this issue.

Feel free to check out this code. I'm sorry if my commit message is hard to follow, but I am tired. Good luck, and happy coding!

Vagrantfile

@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@
 # -*- mode: ruby; -*-
 
 VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"
+MAX_MEMORY = 1024
 
 Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
 
@@ -16,11 +17,16 @@ Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
     config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 1337, host: 1337
 
     # set up synced folder
-    config.vm.synced_folder "./www", "/home/vagrant/www"
+    #config.vm.synced_folder "./www", "/home/vagrant/www"
 
-    # if you are using VirtualBox, uncomment the line below to allow symlinks in the shared "www" folder
-    #config.vm.customize ["setextradata", :id, "VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/home/vagrant/www", "1"]
+    # settings for VirtualBox provider
+    config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |v|
+        v.memory = MAX_MEMORY
+        v.customize ["sharedfolder", "add", :id, "--name", "www", "--hostpath", (("//?/" + File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/www").gsub("/","\\"))]
+        v.customize ["setextradata", :id, "VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/home/vagrant/www", "1"]
+    end
 
-    # call provisioner shell script
+    # call provisioner shell scripts
+    config.vm.provision :shell, inline: "mount -t vboxsf -o uid=`id -u vagrant`,gid=`getent group vagrant | cut -d: -f3` www /home/vagrant/www", run: "always"
     config.vm.provision :shell, path: "./provisioner.sh"
 end

provisioner.sh

@@ -6,8 +6,8 @@ printf "Updating Box..."
 # make sure the box is fully up to date
 apt-get update
 
-# uncomment the line below to allow the system to upgrade
-#apt-get upgrade -y && apt-get dist-upgrade -y
+# comment out the line below to disallow the system to upgrade
+apt-get upgrade -y && apt-get dist-upgrade -y
 
 printf "Adding MongoDB packages to apt..."
 # import the public key used by apt
@@ -21,7 +21,13 @@ apt-get update
 
 printf "Installing a few necessary packages..."
 # install required packages
-apt-get install -y git npm mongodb-org redis-server
+apt-get install -y git nodejs nodejs-legacy npm mongodb-org redis-server
+
+# make sure npm is up to date
+npm install -g npm
+
+# remove old hash for npm so bash will find the new version
+hash -d npm
 
 # backup mongodb-org config file
 cp /etc/mongod.conf /etc/mongod.conf.backup
@@ -75,5 +81,6 @@ cp /home/vagrant/.bashrc /home/vagrant/.bashrc.backup
 # if you don't want npm overridden, comment out the line below
 echo "alias npm='npm --no-bin-links'" >> /home/vagrant/.bashrc
 
+printf "Making sure ownership rights are correct in vagrant user directory..."
 # make sure everything in the vagrant directory is owned by vagrant
 chown -R vagrant:vagrant /home/vagrant --quiet