Azure Node EPERM on symlinks for local module

I'm trying to deploy a node server on azure using local git repository. The node version is 8.0.0 and npm 5.0.0.

I have a local module in the repository that is required by the server. When installed npm creates a symlink in the node_modules to the actual module folder. Locally that works fine, but on azure it seems I'm not allowed to create symlinks, thus getting a EPERM 'symlink' error when deploying.

Is there a workaround for this? A way to either avoid symlinks, or get permission to create them?

via Ivo Udelsmann