My Solution: Completely Remove Node, NPM, NVM & Re-Install
This problem has happened to me a few times in the past (whenever I tried up update or install my node_modules). I literally tried everything above. It always seemed to randomly start working and I was unable to use any previously documented solution the next time the error occurred.
I think I may have had some carry-over issues since I started using Firebase in the early days when there were some weird hacks I did in macOS to get firebase to work correctly.
This solution basically completely removes any trace of node / npm / nvm from your Mac, and re-installs it to use the exact version of node that firebase runs. This uses nvm so if you have other projects that require different node versions, you can switch between node versions on the fly.
1. Delete Existing Node Modules
In your project's folder, delete any node_modules
folders you have.
2. Remove Node
This is the tutorial I used to manually remove node. In the early days, I remember having to change something to install node into a different directory (due to permission issues), so I also did additional searches on my computer to remove these files and folders from other areas.
3. Remove NPM
This is the tutorial I used to make sure I removed traces of npm
4. Remove NVM
This is the tutorial I used to manually remove NVM
5. Restart
After removing everything and restarting bash (or restarting your Mac as I did for safety) - typing node
, npm
, and nvm
into the console should simply return command not found
.
6. Re-Install Node, NPM Using NVM Only
NVM allows you to install a specific version of node. Since I am using the firebase-functions node 8 runtime (beta), I installed their listed target version of node 8. (as of now, node 8.11.1). This is still in beta, firebase functions uses node 6.11.5 as of the time of this writing.
Instructions for installing node, npm using nvm
7. Update NPM Manually
NVM installed an older version of npm. This command updates NPM to its latest version.
npm install npm@latest -g
8. Install Your Modules
Restart your terminal app just in case, then return to your project folder and run the npm install
command.
9. Re-Build & Re-Deploy
If you are using webpack, re-build your project. Then deploy or serve locally.
This process solved the problem for me. Hopefully it works for you and you don't have to do any hack stuff. It seems all I needed to do was some cleaning up.