bower command not returning anything

Question

I've been trying to install bower, but I must be missing something cause the command bower is not returning anything at all!

I installed bower like this:

sudo npm install bower -g

this is the output:

npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/bower
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/bower
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/tmp
...
...  # Many requests here n_n
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/traverse
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/traverse
/usr/bin/bower -> /usr/lib/node_modules/bower/bin/bower
[email protected] /usr/lib/node_modules/bower
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected] ([email protected])
├── [email protected] ([email protected])
├── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected])
├── [email protected] ([email protected])
├── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected])
├── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
├── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected])
├── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
└── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])

seems ok..

but then I do bower --help and nothing happens, it doesn't show anything.. I've even tried a sudo bower --help

My nodejs version is v0.8.22 , npm version 1.2.14 on Ubuntu 12.10

Any ideas?? thanks in advance

Solution 1

Ok!!!

I found the problem... this is so stupid it made me laugh (even if i lost my night on this)

It seems that there's another software called "node" (Amateur Packet Radio Node program). I removed that software with sudo apt-get remove node, reinstalled nodeJS, then sudo npm install bower -g et voila!!!

so it seems that amateur packet radio people dont get along with web developpers... too bad

Hope this helps someone else

Solution 2

Are you working behind a proxy? It seems bower doesn't automatically pick up proxy settings like npm does.

If you set the HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY environment variables, then bower should work.

https://github.com/twitter/bower/issues/208

Note, they have to be upper case.

Derm

Solution 3

Having the same issues.

All I did was edit the bower source code and alter the first line.

Fire up your terminal and jank this:

sudo nano `which bower`

Edit the first line that says:

#!/usr/bin/env node

And change it to:

#!/usr/bin/env nodejs

Make sure node (Amateur Packet Radio Node program) is not installed.

Viola that's it. Works for mint and ubuntu

Solution 4

Also make sure you're using a 'stable' version of nodejs; I also had this problem, turns out was caused by installing/using latest unstable build. Don't know whether it was a node issue, or an npm one (appears npm updates are packaged along w/ node).

(quick aside, use 'n' - https://github.com/visionmedia/n - to manage your node version...much less of a PITA ;))

Solution 5

I had similar issues on a mac, in the end updating my path for npm seemed to work:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/share/npm/bin

View more solutions