Typing the full pathname is not a user-friendly requirement to execute the command. We want to use the commands installed by modules, and we want a simple process for doing so. Meaning, we must add an appropriate value in the PATH variable, but what is it?

For global package installations, the executable lands in a directory that is probably already in your PATH variable, like /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin. Local package installations are what require special handling. The full path for the node_modules/.bin directory varies for each project, and obviously it won't work to add the full path for every node_modules/.bin directory to your PATH.

Adding ./node_modules/.bin to the PATH variable (or, on Windows, .\node_modules\.bin) works great. Any time your shell is in the root of a Node.js project, it will automatically find locally-installed commands from Node.js packages.

How we do this depends on the command shell you use, and your operating system.

On a Unix-like system the command shells are bash and csh. Your PATH variable would be set up in one of these ways:

$ export PATH=./node_modules/.bin:${PATH}     # bash
$ setenv PATH ./node_modules/.bin:${PATH}     # csh

The next step is adding the command to your login scripts so the variable is always set. On bash, add the corresponding line to your ~/.bashrc, and on csh add it to your ~/.cshrc.