How to install packages from GitHub using NPM

November 05, 2022

Using the npm registry is not the only source that we can use to install packages into our applications. NPM also has the ability to install from a remote git url as long as the repository has a package.json file in it’s root directory.

npm install prisma tailwindcss nextjs

Installing from GitHub

For example, you could install the same prisma package from it’s GitHub repo:

npm install https://github.com/prisma/prisma

Installing a specific branch from Github

You can choose to install a specific branch by adding /tree/[branch] to your url, where branch is the release number.

For example, if you wanted 4.3.1 of Prisma:

npm install https://github.com/prisma/prisma/tree/4.3.1

Installing a specific commit from GitHub

You can also use a commit by adding /tree/[commit] to your url:

npm install https://github.com/prisma/prisma/tree/333dd87a879

Installing using a GitHub URI

You can also use the Github URI to install a package. This will resolve the uri to a url.

npm install github:prisma/prisma

The uri github:prisma/prisma will now resolve to https://github.com/prisma/prisma and install the prisma package for you.

What do they look like in the package.json

{
  "dependencies": {
    "prisma": "github:prisma/prisma#333dd87a879",
    "express" : "github:expressjs/express#4.18.2",
    "next" : "github:vercel/next.js",
  }
}

When you do not provide a specific branch or commit, the installation will assume that you are using the default branch (main or master)