Npm install of aurelia project in docker container gets stuck/hangs on jenkins build server

Question

Problem

Most of my Jenkins builds get stuck at npm install. The issue is not reproducible locally what makes it hard to narrow down. The build server would just endlessly hang at a "random" package while until you'd manually stop it.

16:33:55  [0m[91mnpm http fetch GET 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/ws/-/ws-6.2.1.tgz 737ms

Analysis

The frontend is developed with Aurelia and is part of a monorepo that is managed by Docker. This is my only project that uses Aurelia CLI so I thought I could find the problem there - but without any results.

I've already tried to analyze the issue by executing npm install --verbose but didn't gain any additional valuable information. It wasn't a specific package that lead to the problem nor was it a noticeable timeout.

# Dockerfile
FROM node:12.13.0 as builder
WORKDIR /web
COPY web .
RUN pwd
RUN npm install --verbose
RUN npm run build

FROM nginx:mainline-alpine
COPY --from=builder /web/dist /usr/share/nginx/html
COPY html/index.html /usr/share/nginx/html/index2.html
COPY nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Answer 1

After investigating the problem for a long time, I discovered the newly introduced npm ci command and used it instead of npm install which solved the problem. Unfortunately installing a project with a clean state is a good idea ;-)

This command is similar to npm-install, except it’s meant to be used in automated environments such as test platforms, continuous integration, and deployment – or any situation where you want to make sure you’re doing a clean install of your dependencies. It can be significantly faster than a regular npm install by skipping certain user-oriented features. It is also more strict than a regular install, which can help catch errors or inconsistencies caused by the incrementally-installed local environments of most npm users.