Firebase Update Control Error

One of my websites (not this one) is hosted via Firebase. It’s a largely static site that I rarely need to touch. I manage it from their CLI running on a VPS that I do some coding on so that I can access it regardless of which of my numerous devices I happen to be using. Since I don’t touch the site regularly, though, the Firebase tools tend to get a bit out of date. I needed to push a minor change the other day and figured I’d check for an update:

sudo npm install -g firebase-tools

Instead of completing happily, though, I got the following:

npm ERR! path /usr/local/bin/firebase
npm ERR! code EEXIST
npm ERR! Refusing to delete /usr/local/bin/firebase: ../lib/node_modules/firebase-tools/bin/firebase symlink target is not controlled by npm /usr/local/bin
npm ERR! File exists: /usr/local/bin/firebase
npm ERR! Move it away, and try again.

I’m a bit embarrassed that I did a bunch of super unnecessary troubleshooting at first instead of just reading the error. When I finally got to that point because things like clearing the npm cache didn't work, I saw noticed this:

File exists: /usr/local/bin/firebase
Move it away, and try again.

Okay, seems sensible enough. I first just renamed it in the same directory.

sudo mv /usr/local/bin/firebase /usr/local/bin/firebaseBKP

I re-ran the npm installation command, and sure enough it worked without any issues. I verified I could actually see firebase in my $PATH:

which firebase

And that it was the newer version:

firebase --version

With that out of the way, I simply deleted the file I renamed:

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/firebaseBKP

Then I could push the update to my site without any issues. To be honest I’m not entirely sure why or how that file wouldn’t be controlled by firebase or it couldn't be removed by running the command under sudo, but I'm happy that it had a clear error message that allowed me to fix things easily enough... once I actually, you know, read the error message.

Originally published at https://looped.network on April 9, 2019.