hi, the most recent documentation on how to install paperless-ngx on bare metal states you dont have to compile the frontend by yourself anymore:
https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/setup/#bare_metal [..] Optional: If you cloned the git repo, you will have to compile the frontend yourself, [..] so it seems the release packages come with the frontend pre-compiled. I just recently setup paperless-ngx on debian with the ansible role available here: https://github.com/paperless-ngx/ansible which does not seem to use/install npm/node or other java script related tools to build/install paperless-ngx from a relase tarball. Maybe it makes sense to have a look again, bye, - michael
