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Pants

```Package linking is a two-step process.

       First, npm link in a package folder will create a globally-installed symbolic link from prefix/package-name to the current folder (see npm help 7 npm-config for the value of prefix).

       Next, in some other location, npm link package-name will create a symlink from the local node_modules folder to the global symlink.
```

And mixing in the --prefix trick in my head

hmmm im not quite sure i follow - try it and see if you can get it to work with webpack and a project depending on webpack in package.json without having NPM recompile the C code for fsevents when you link it in

otherwise, the sort of ugly solution of manually symlinking in webpack and its global/bin entry as above does seem to work, and i guess in theory would work if repeated at the top level for all node_remote_module dependencies

and is the only way ive found that avoids recompiling

How are you verifying recompile --verbose?

&gt; node-gyp rebuild

  SOLINK_MODULE(target) Release/.node
  CXX(target) Release/obj.target/fse/fsevents.o
  SOLINK_MODULE(target) Release/fse.node

This command runs the npm build command on the matched folders. This is useful when you install a new version of node, and must recompile all your C++ addons with the new binary.

“when you install a new version of node…"

even if we manage to avoid it and make built artifacts for 3rd party modules cacheable, the cache will have to take node version into account

anyway im gonna go for now, ill probably check in again later tonight

let me know if you get npm link to work, or if not you can try the steps i described above too

just make a “script” field in your package.json that calls webpack to see if “npm run [script]” works after whatever you try

$ npm install webpack@1.12.0 -g --prefix ./webpack-canonical --cache ./npm-cache --verbose 2&gt;&amp;1 | tee webpack.log.txt

I get no SOLINK on linux using a fresh cache and --prefix just installing webpack for the 1st time

I probably have too new a webpack, it does not have the dep chain to fs-events you describe:
 ls -1  webpack-canonical/lib/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/watchpack/node_modules/chokidar/node_modules/

anymatch
arrify
async-each
glob-parent
is-binary-path
is-glob
path-is-absolute
readdirp