NPM

Node Package Manager is a hub from which you can install, manage, and maintain node/Javascript projects. NPM is bundled with node, so of you have installed node, you have npm.

Install Multiple Versions of Same Package[4]

# npm i package_name_alias@npm:package_name
# e.g. with express
npm i express
npm i express-old@npm:express@1.0.0

This will yield this in your package.json dependencies:

"dependencies": {
    "express": "*",
    "express-old": "npm:express@1.0.0"
}

Delete old `node_modules`!

node_modules folders take up stupid amounts of space on your computer. Luckily, if you regularly delete all of them on your computer, you can just reinstall the ones you need for projects you use/work on right now. (The following examples are all for OSX, but you can find Windows examples at the source[2]).

Show all node_modules folders within and their respective size:

find . -name "node_modules" -type d -prune -print0 | xargs -0 du -chs

Delete the node_modules folders found recursively within the current directory:

find . -name 'node_modules' -type d -prune -print0 -exec rm -rf '{}' \;

Note: using a package like trash-cli[3] can help if you don't want your mistakes to be irreversible.

Delete the global node_modules folder:

npm ls -gp --depth=0 | awk -F/ '/node_modules/ && !/\/npm$/ {print $NF}' | xargs npm -g rm

Troubleshooting

Global Packages Not Found

If you have installed a package globally (npm i -g {package}) and you can't use because it is "not found", try the below steps.

npm list -g --depth=0 - This should show your package.
npm bin -g - Take note of this directory.
npm config set prefix - Take note of this directory as well.
Create a place for your npm global packages to reside and set your path to point to them:

mkdir ~/.npm-global  # this could already exist. If so, skip.
npm config set prefix ~/.npm-global  # If your prefix is already set to here, you can skip.
export PATH=~/.npm-global/bin:$PATH
source ~/.profile

Try installing your package once again globally.

Package Lock Conflicts During Rebase

See Rebase (git).

devDependencies

You can save packages as a devDependency by using --save-dev as an option in the CLI.

devDependencies are for the developers of the project. Things like test frameworks, documentation, etc. If someone downloads and uses your project, they won't have the dev dependencies installed. If someone wants to build on your project, they can download the dev dependencies.

References

Incoming Links

Last modified: 202401040446

NPM