verdaccio

What is verdaccio?

Verdaccio is a lightweight private npm proxy registry that allows you to host your own npm registry and cache npm packages. It is useful for speeding up npm installs, working offline, and hosting private packages.

What are verdaccio's main functionalities?

Private Registry

This configuration sets up Verdaccio as a private npm registry with authentication and proxying to the official npm registry.

const config = {
  storage: './storage',
  auth: {
    htpasswd: {
      file: './htpasswd'
    }
  },
  uplinks: {
    npmjs: {
      url: 'https://registry.npmjs.org/'
    }
  },
  packages: {
    '@*/*': {
      access: '$all',
      publish: '$authenticated',
      proxy: 'npmjs'
    },
    '**': {
      access: '$all',
      publish: '$authenticated',
      proxy: 'npmjs'
    }
  }
};

module.exports = config;

Caching

This configuration allows Verdaccio to cache packages from the official npm registry, speeding up subsequent installs.

const config = {
  storage: './storage',
  uplinks: {
    npmjs: {
      url: 'https://registry.npmjs.org/'
    }
  },
  packages: {
    '**': {
      access: '$all',
      proxy: 'npmjs'
    }
  }
};

module.exports = config;

Offline Mode

This configuration sets up Verdaccio to work in offline mode, using only the locally cached packages.

const config = {
  storage: './storage',
  uplinks: {},
  packages: {
    '**': {
      access: '$all'
    }
  }
};

module.exports = config;

Other packages similar to verdaccio

sinopia

Sinopia is an older private npm registry server that allows you to host your own npm registry. It is similar to Verdaccio but is no longer actively maintained.

npm-registry-couchapp

npm-registry-couchapp is a CouchDB-based npm registry implementation. It is more complex to set up compared to Verdaccio but offers more flexibility and scalability.

cnpm

cnpm is a private npm registry and web for Enterprise, base on the official npm registry. It is designed for use within a company and offers features like syncing with the official npm registry.

README

Verdaccio

A lightweight private npm proxy registry

verdaccio is a fork of sinopia. It aims to keep backwards compatibility with sinopia, while keeping up with npm changes.

Logo

We are looking for a new logo, ⚡⚡⚡ please 🙏🙏 I encorage you to contribute helping us to decide ⚡⚡⚡

It allows you to have a local npm private registry with zero configuration. You don't have to install and replicate an entire database. Verdaccio keeps its own small database and, if a package doesn't exist there, it asks any other registry (npmjs.org) for it keeping only those packages you use.

Introduction

Use private packages

If you want to use all benefits of npm package system in your company without sending all code to the public, and use your private packages just as easy as public ones.

Cache npmjs.org registry

If you have more than one server you want to install packages on, you might want to use this to decrease latency (presumably "slow" npmjs.org will be connected to only once per package/version) and provide limited failover (if npmjs.org is down, we might still find something useful in the cache) or avoid issues like How one developer just broke Node, Babel and thousands of projects in 11 lines of JavaScript.

Override public packages

If you want to use a modified version of some 3rd-party package (for example, you found a bug, but maintainer didn't accept pull request yet), you can publish your version locally under the same name.

See in detail each of these use cases.

Get Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js >= 4.6.1
• npm or yarn

Installation and starting (application will create default config in config.yaml you can edit later)

npm install --global verdaccio

Run in your terminal

verdaccio

After npm 5.2 you can use npx which install and launch verdaccio with the same command

npx verdaccio

You would need set some npm configuration, this is optional.

$ npm set registry http://localhost:4873/
# if you use HTTPS, add an appropriate CA information
# ("null" means get CA list from OS)
$ npm set ca null

Now you can navigate to http://localhost:4873/ where your local packages will be listed and can be searched.

Beta

If you are an adventurous developer you can use and install the latest beta version, this is a non stable version, I'd recommend only use for testing purporses.

$ npm install -g verdaccio@beta

Publishing Private Packages

Create an user and log in

npm adduser --registry http://localhost:4873

Publish your package

npm publish --registry http://localhost:4873

This will prompt you for user credentials which will be saved on the verdaccio server.

Server Side Configuration

When you start a server, it auto-creates a config file. For instructions on how to run Verdaccio as a service, with a nice URL or behind a proxy have a look at the server-side configure document.

Docker

Below are the most commony needed informations, every aspect of Docker and verdaccio is documented separately

Prebuilt images

To pull the latest pre-built docker image:

docker pull verdaccio/verdaccio

Since version 2 images for every versions are availabel as tags.

Running verdaccio using Docker

To run the docker container:

docker run -it --rm --name verdaccio -p 4873:4873 verdaccio/verdaccio

Using docker-compose

1. Get the latest version of docker-compose.
2. Build and run the container:

$ docker-compose up --build

Docker examples are available in this repository.

• Docker + Nginx
• Docker + Kubernetes
• Docker + Apache

Advanced Infrastructure Management Tools

Ansible

A Verdaccio playbook is available at galaxy

Source: https://github.com/verdaccio/ansible-verdaccio

Maintainer: @030

Chef

The Verdaccio Chef cookbook is available via the chef supermarket.

Source: https://github.com/verdaccio/verdaccio-cookbook.

Maintainer: @kgrubb

Puppet

Source: https://github.com/verdaccio/puppet-verdaccio.

Maintainer: No asigned yet

Compatibility

Verdaccio aims to support all features of a standard npm client that make sense to support in private repository. Unfortunately, it isn't always possible.

Basic features

• Installing packages (npm install, npm upgrade, etc.) - supported
• Publishing packages (npm publish) - supported

Advanced package control

• Unpublishing packages (npm unpublish) - supported
• Tagging (npm tag) - supported
• Deprecation (npm deprecate) - not supported

User management

• Registering new users (npm adduser {newuser}) - supported
• Transferring ownership (npm owner add {user} {pkg}) - not supported, verdaccio uses its own acl management system

Misc stuff

• Searching (npm search) - supported (cli / browser)
• Starring (npm star, npm unstar) - not supported, doesn't make sense in private registry
• Ping (npm ping) - supported

Storage

No CouchDB here. This application is supposed to work with zero configuration, so filesystem is used as a storage.

If you want to use a database instead, ask for it, we'll come up with some kind of a plugin system.

About the storage there is a running discussion here.

Similar existing things

• npm + git (I mean, using git+ssh:// dependencies) - most people seem to use this, but it's a terrible idea... npm update doesn't work, can't use git subdirectories this way, etc.
• reggie - this looks very interesting indeed... I might borrow some code there.
• shadow-npm, public service - it uses the same code as npmjs.org + service is dead
• gemfury and others - those are closed-source cloud services, and I'm not in a mood to trust my private code to somebody (security through obscurity yeah!)
• npm-registry-proxy, npm-delegate, npm-proxy - those are just proxies...
• nexus-repository-oss - Repository manager that handles more than just NPM dependencies
• Is there something else?
• codebox-npm - Serverless private npm registry using
• local-npm - Local and offline-first npm mirror

FAQ / Contact / Troubleshoot

If you have any issue you can try the following options, do no desist to ask or check our issues database, perhaps someone has asked already what you are looking for.

• Most common questions
• Reporting a bug
• Running discussions
• Chat Room