custom plugin dependencies

[arlolra]

i'm writing some custom plugins but they have dependencies on packages i don't want to install globally ( i don't think they should be ). unfortunately, this means node can't find them ( them being the deps i'm requiring ). i'd like to just put a package.json inside the folder i installed haraka's configs / plugins to and npm install them to a node_modules beside plugins and config.

this seems to work and keeps things clean. it was the best i could come up with according to the way modules are resolved:
http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.3.1/api/modules.html#module_Resolving

of course, i could just add this line at the top of each of my plugins, but i thought it might become something canonical. other people will hopefully be writing custom plugins as well one day. what do you think?

[arlolra]

along the same line ... if you accept this, should the install generate a package.json as well?

[arlolra]

hmm, maybe this is the wrong thing to do:
http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.4.7/api/modules.html#loading_from_the_require.paths_Folders

[baudehlo]

Yeah then I guess you could even package up your custom mail server with a dependency on Haraka...

Didn't I read though on the node mailing list that require.paths is going away? If not, I'll just take the patch.

[arlolra]

It says require.paths may disappear. A lot of libraries still rely on it though.

It might not be the best solution, but so far I haven't figured anything else out. Using vm.runInNewContext kind of complicates things ... do you have any ideas?

[baudehlo]

To be honest I think worst case scenario, if require.paths goes away then we could always hack plugin loading to provide a custom require() to work around it... I'll apply the patch.

[arlolra]

as suspected nodejs/node-v0.x-archive@7f0047c

but seems like using NODE_PATH is an easy fix