[Tooling] Installing genkit-cli using pnpm run setup can fail because of permissions problems

[yesudeep]

Describe the bug
When running pnpm run setup, the npm link stage can fail to create symlinks if npm isn't run as root. It's likely not a good idea to run npm as root.

> genkit@ link-genkit-cli /home/yesudeep/code/github.com/firebase/genkit
> cd genkit-tools/cli && npm link

npm error code EACCES
npm error syscall mkdir
npm error path /usr/local/lib/node_modules
npm error errno -13
npm error Error: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/usr/local/lib/node_modules'
npm error     at async mkdir (node:internal/fs/promises:857:10)
npm error     at async #extractOrLink (/usr/lib/node_modules_22/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/arborist/lib/arborist/reify.js:811:5)
npm error     at async /usr/lib/node_modules_22/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/arborist/lib/arborist/reify.js:715:7
npm error     at async Promise.allSettled (index 0)
npm error     at async [reifyPackages] (/usr/lib/node_modules_22/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/arborist/lib/arborist/reify.js:325:11)
npm error     at async Arborist.reify (/usr/lib/node_modules_22/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/arborist/lib/arborist/reify.js:142:5)
npm error     at async Link.linkPkg (/usr/lib/node_modules_22/npm/lib/commands/link.js:147:5)
npm error     at async Npm.exec (/usr/lib/node_modules_22/npm/lib/npm.js:207:9)
npm error     at async module.exports (/usr/lib/node_modules_22/npm/lib/cli/entry.js:74:5) {
npm error   errno: -13,
npm error   code: 'EACCES',
npm error   syscall: 'mkdir',
npm error   path: '/usr/local/lib/node_modules'
npm error }
npm error
npm error The operation was rejected by your operating system.
npm error It is likely you do not have the permissions to access this file as the current user
npm error
npm error If you believe this might be a permissions issue, please double-check the
npm error permissions of the file and its containing directories, or try running
npm error the command again as root/Administrator.
npm error A complete log of this run can be found in: /home/yesudeep/.npm/_logs/2025-02-05T04_54_52_317Z-debug-0.log
 ELIFECYCLE  Command failed with exit code 243.
ERROR: "link-genkit-cli" exited with 243.
 ELIFECYCLE  Command failed with exit code 1.

To Reproduce

1. Run pnpm install and pnpm run setup on Fedora Linux 41.

Expected behavior
The repository version of genkit CLI should be usable without having to modify system files.

Screenshots
N/A

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Fedora Linux 41
• Browser Google Chrome
• Version 41

Additional context

1. A potential workaround would be to have a script wrapping the genkit CLI so the npm link stage is not required.

[tonybaroneee]

I'd look into using nvm, or something similar to manage a node installation that is outside of /usr/local/lib where you are lacking permissions. For your machine, this issue would not be unique to genkit.

[yesudeep]

Unfortunately, even after setting up nvm, for some reason the npm link subcommand doesn't appear to symlink the repo-local version of the genkit CLI and we need a way to run the repo-local version of the genkit CLI. The wrapper script makes it convenient for our eng team to do this. I'll move this to the py/bin/genkit directory for now and will re-evaluate this a little later (post dev cleanup) to clean this script up when we figure out why npm link isn't doing what we're expecting it to on our machines.

[MichaelDoyle]

What do you get when you do which genkit in your terminal? Do you have genkit installed (globally) perhaps from following customer onboarding docs somewhere? Try removing it, OR make sure nvm is set earlier on your $PATH.

Should get something clean like this:

michaeldoyle-mac:~ michaeldoyle$
michaeldoyle-mac:~ michaeldoyle$ which genkit
/Users/michaeldoyle/.nvm/versions/node/v22.13.1/bin/genkit
michaeldoyle-mac:~ michaeldoyle$ genkit --version
1.0.0-rc.17

[yesudeep]

@MichaelDoyle I had to remove a previous global installation of genkit, remove pnpm, add nvm, install pnpm and then run the instructions from the docs for it to work. Closing this bug. Thank you!