Is installing Directus with NPM deprecated?

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Once upon a time I was running Directus with the help of Cloudpanel. Is installing Directus with NPM deprecated now? It’s completely missing from the new docs. I’d rather not install/rely on Docker especially on my local machine. This now seems to be limited to old Node 18: npm init directus-project directus

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Hi there, welcome to the community! Glad to have you here. :waving_hand:

Personally, I’m right there with you - or used to be at least :sweat_smile: . Didn’t want to use Docker or didn’t think I really needed it. Now - 100% would not go back. Directus + Docker keeps me on the happy path - instead of messing with dependencies in all the different versions of Node on my machine.

At the company level, we strongly discourage running Directus through “raw” Node.js.

There are system dependencies like isolated-vm and libvips that can cause issues.

Using Docker solves those issues and makes for a much more reliable development and deployment experience.

Recommended approaches:

  • Docker - Our preferred method for production deployments
  • Directus Cloud - Fully managed hosting if you want zero infrastructure headaches

The npm installation method isn’t technically deprecated, but it’s definitely not the path we’d recommend for most use cases.

Let me know if you have any other questions about getting set up!

Bryant, really appreciate the feedback and your helpful tutorials. Thanks for the Docker/Directus reassurance. I continue to go back and forth. Especially on smaller projects, I don't know if Docker is another layer of abstraction, or it's being useful. For argument sake, testing Directus locally – npm init directus-project directus appears to only be functional running Node 18. Even if I switched to one of my older Node profiles, v18 is a bridge too far. Has npm init directus-project directus been superseded by another npm scaffolding command?

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The reason we're recommending Docker all the time is that it avoids the differences in environment from becoming a problem. While it might run on your machine on Node 18, it might not on others, even on the same OS and version of Node due to the various native dependencies we rely on (like argon2 for example). I'd recommend with the Docker container always as it ensures you have a reproducible and deterministic hosting environment

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