Laravel 5.4 Setup Issues

Larevel Out 5.4 Out Of the Box

Laravel 5.0 brought about a lot of changes and each version brings in great new features. With 5.4 I set up a test server and installed a fresh copy. Following the setup instructions from Laravel I ran NPM RUN DEV and much to my dismey was presented with this:

> @ dev /Users/sherwin/apps/laravel/test_project
> cross-env NODE_ENV=development webpack --progress --hide-modules --config=node_modules/laravel-mix/setup/webpack.config.js

sh: cross-env: command not found

npm ERR! Darwin 16.3.0
npm ERR! argv "/usr/local/Cellar/node/7.3.0/bin/node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "run" "dev"
npm ERR! node v7.3.0
npm ERR! npm  v3.10.10
npm ERR! file sh
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! errno ENOENT
npm ERR! syscall spawn
npm ERR! @ dev: `cross-env NODE_ENV=development webpack --progress --hide-modules --config=node_modules/laravel-mix/setup/webpack.config.js`
npm ERR! spawn ENOENT
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Failed at the @ dev script 'cross-env NODE_ENV=development webpack --progress --hide-modules --config=node_modules/laravel-mix/setup/webpack.config.js'.
npm ERR! Make sure you have the latest version of node.js and npm installed.
npm ERR! If you do, this is most likely a problem with the  package,
npm ERR! not with npm itself.
npm ERR! Tell the author that this fails on your system:
npm ERR!     cross-env NODE_ENV=development webpack --progress --hide-modules --config=node_modules/laravel-mix/setup/webpack.config.js

The FIX-

After a lot of googling and trouble shooting the problem appears to be in the package.json file. Although there are several ways to correct the problem this is by far the easist. Out of the box package.json looks like this:

{
  "private": true,
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "node node_modules/cross-env/bin/cross-env.js NODE_ENV=development node_modules/webpack/bin/webpack.js --progress --hide-modules --config=node_modules/laravel-mix/setup/webpack.config.js",
    "watch": "node node_modules/cross-env/bin/cross-env.js NODE_ENV=development node_modules/webpack/bin/webpack.js --watch --progress --hide-modules --config=node_modules/laravel-mix/setup/webpack.config.js",
    "hot": "node node_modules/cross-env/bin/cross-env.js NODE_ENV=development node_modules/webpack-dev-server/bin/webpack-dev-server.js --inline --hot --config=node_modules/laravel-mix/setup/webpack.config.js",
    "production": "node node_modules/cross-env/bin/cross-env.js NODE_ENV=production node_modules/webpack/bin/webpack.js --progress --hide-modules --config=node_modules/laravel-mix/setup/webpack.config.js"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "axios": "^0.15.2",
    "bootstrap-sass": "^3.3.7",
    "jquery": "^3.1.0",
    "laravel-mix": "^0.6.0",
    "lodash": "^4.16.2",
    "vue": "^2.0.1"
  }
}

THE CORRECTION IS:

{
  "private": true,
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "node node_modules/cross-env/bin/cross-env.js NODE_ENV=development node_modules/webpack/bin/webpack.js --progress --hide-modules --config=node_modules/laravel-mix/setup/webpack.config.js",
    "watch": "node node_modules/cross-env/bin/cross-env.js NODE_ENV=development node_modules/webpack/bin/webpack.js --watch --progress --hide-modules --config=node_modules/laravel-mix/setup/webpack.config.js",
    "hot": "node node_modules/cross-env/bin/cross-env.js NODE_ENV=development node_modules/webpack-dev-server/bin/webpack-dev-server.js --inline --hot --config=node_modules/laravel-mix/setup/webpack.config.js",
    "production": "node node_modules/cross-env/bin/cross-env.js NODE_ENV=production node_modules/webpack/bin/webpack.js --progress --hide-modules --config=node_modules/laravel-mix/setup/webpack.config.js"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "axios": "^0.15.2",
    "bootstrap-sass": "^3.3.7",
    "jquery": "^3.1.0",
    "laravel-mix": "^0.6.0",
    "lodash": "^4.16.2",
    "vue": "^2.0.1"
  },
  "babel": {
    "presets": [
      "es2015"
    ]
  }
}

Laravel's Future

Laravel is an amazing framework built for speed and security and with the inclusion of support for vue.js right of out the box it has a bright future. I hope as the framework grows and evoloves that better solutions for upgrading between versions is implemented and that beta testing is done a bit more throughly before a version release.

If you haven't checkeed out Laravel I encourge you head over to https://laravel.com/!

If you find this article useful and it saves you some headache give it a boost!

Happy Coding-

David