gyp WARN EACCES user "root" does not have permission to access the dev dir

Trying to

sudo npm install protractor -g

and the same notorious error/warning again (googled to no avail):

gyp WARN EACCES user "root" does not have permission to access the dev dir "/Users/dmitrizaitsev/.node-gyp/0.12.0"

What seems to happen is that node version 0.12.0 is downloaded and rebuilt, again and again during the same installation, despite of being the current node version on my machine:

node -v
v0.12.0

Questions:

• 
  

  The directory "/Users/dmitrizaitsev/.node-gyp/0.12.0" is actually missing! Why such a misleading message?

  
  


• 
  

  Why was this directory not created neither during the node v0.12.0 nor during the previous successful rebuild with node-gyp?

  
  


• 
  

  (Obviously) How can I prevent this from happening?

  
  

I run Mac OSX 10.8.5 if that is of any importance.