This is one way to do this, but I got it to work.
I just created another project (I had a basic web-api project) and copied the "node_modules" directory to this project. This is my understanding of "include in the project" VALID for other types of projects, so I used my api web project and it worked.
Then, turning it on, I right-clicked on the project file and executed “Unloading Project”. After unloading the project, you can "edit" the project also using the context menu. All I did was search for the “Item Group” with all the “nodes”. I took the whole group of xml entries from the project definition and cut / pasted into notepad.
Then he closed the project and switched to the Angular2 project. I unloaded this project in the same way as with webapi, and again went into edit mode. Then I copied the contents of the "Element Group" into the Angular2 project. I saved and then reloaded the project. Then you can see the node_modules directory (not in ghost mode, as it was originally). I restored the packages and they all appeared as “installed”.
I still got a warning that npm was not installed, but I started the project and it worked. FWIW until it is fixed. Agree that this is the best job!
source share