Azure DevOps gulp step fails with Local modules not found

Question

I have a Azure DevOps build step that runs gulp for an angularjs application. I set the Gulp file path to point to the GulpFile.js the referenced task should bundle the app and put the files into a zip file in the solution folder. This works fine when I run this locally in Visual Studio.

The error I am getting during the build is the following:

2019-07-08T15:54:56.5447810Z Task : Gulp 2019-07-08T15:54:56.5447868Z Description : Node.js streaming task based build system 2019-07-08T15:54:56.5447921Z Version : 0.141.2 2019-07-08T15:54:56.5447966Z Author : Microsoft Corporation 2019-07-08T15:54:56.5448064Z Help : More Information 2019-07-08T15:54:56.5448113Z ============================================================================== 2019-07-08T15:54:57.7184034Z [command]C:\Users\MYUSER\AppData\Roaming\npm\gulp.cmd Export --gulpfile C:\a_work\15\s\UI\Gulpfile.js 2019-07-08T15:54:58.6597682Z [[90m15:54:58[39m] Local modules not found in C:\a_work\15\s\UI 2019-07-08T15:54:58.6597830Z [[90m15:54:58[39m] Try running: npm install

Does this error occur because Node is missing the necessary modules to bundle the app. Can I make the bundle task call npm install for the app before continueing the task?

Answer 1

You can add a task just do the npm install before the gulp build:

steps:
- task: Npm@1
  displayName: 'npm install'
  inputs:
    command: install
    workingDir: '$(Build.SourcesDirectory)'
    verbose: false