npm run build fails on Ubuntu 14.04: SOLVED

[JohnAtFenestra]

I thought you should know that the command npm run build fails on Ubuntu. I traced the cause to one incompatibility. The issue is in the line:

"copy": "cp src/{*.html,*.css,*.js} built/"

which produces the following error:

cp: cannot stat ‘src/{*.html,*.css,*.js}’: No such file or directory

npm uses sh as the shell command call. Since Ubuntu 6.0, sh points to dash instead of bash. dash is significantly faster than bash but lacks some bash features such as brace expansion. I resolved the problem by creating two small files, copy-script.sh and copy-templates-script.sh and invoking them instead of the direct commands.

copy-script.sh

#! /bin/bash
cp src/{*.html,*.css,*.js} built/

copy-templates-script.sh

#! /bin/bash
cp src/app/{*.html,*.css} built/app/

changed package.json:

  "scripts": {
    "postinstall": "typings install --ambient",
    "clean": "rimraf built/",
    "copy": "./copy-script.sh",
    "copytemplates": "./copy-templates-script.sh",
    "build": "tsc && npm run copy",
    "watch": "tsc --watch",
    "serve": "http-server -p 9090 -c-1",
    "test": "karma start karma.conf.js"
  },