Description
I was helping @NathanWalker tonight with an issue; and it "appears" tns makes the assumption that if the module is NOT listed in the main package.json file devDependancy; that it is a valid dependency.
However, when dealing with some larger projects a devDependancy will install its own devDependancies; and TNS will see these as "Dependancies" and copy them into /platforms/android/src/main/assets/app/tns_modules/ -- then the gradle builder system will attempt to use them as valid dependancies. In Nathan's case; the tar and tar-pack that are pulled in by the gyp tooling were being copied and attempted to be processed. Which would cause the android tooling to fail with an error that I would bet you that Nathan would tell you is very unhelpful.
I believe this is a flawed assumption to assume anything not listed as a direct "devDependancy" is a valid dependancy. I assume the best way to fix this would be to actually iterate through all the package.json files and make a real dependency tree -- probably cache it in the node_modules (use foldernames and main package.json file as as hash name. I would also probably recommend that you make tns require npm 3 or later so that everything is installed in the node_modules folder rather than in sub-directories of the plugins, as this should make this a lot simpler to manage.