npm 5 was released today and one of the new features include deterministic installs with the creation of a package-lock.json file.
Is this file supposed to be kept in source control?
I'm assuming it's similar to yarn.lock and composer.lock, both of which are supposed to be kept in source control.
Yes, package-lock.json is intended to be checked into source control. If you're using npm 5+, you may see this notice on the command line: created a lockfile as package-lock.json. You should commit this file. According to npm help package-lock.json:
package-lock.json is automatically generated for any operations where npm
modifies either the node_modules tree, or package.json. It describes the
exact tree that was generated, such that subsequent installs are able to
generate identical trees, regardless of intermediate dependency updates.
This file is intended to be committed into source repositories, and serves
various purposes:
Describe a single representation of a dependency tree such that teammates, deployments, and continuous integration are guaranteed to install exactly the same dependencies.
Provide a facility for users to "time-travel" to previous states of node_modules without having to commit the directory itself.
To facilitate greater visibility of tree changes through readable source control diffs.
And optimize the installation process by allowing npm to skip repeated metadata resolutions for previously-installed packages.
One key detail about package-lock.json is that it cannot be published, and it
will be ignored if found in any place other than the toplevel package. It shares
a format with npm-shrinkwrap.json, which is essentially the same file, but
allows publication. This is not recommended unless deploying a CLI tool or
otherwise using the publication process for producing production packages.
If both package-lock.json and npm-shrinkwrap.json are present in the root of
a package, package-lock.json will be completely ignored.
Yes, you SHOULD:
commit the package-lock.json.
use npm ci instead of npm install when building your applications both on your CI and your local development machine
The npm ci workflow requires the existence of a package-lock.json.
A big downside of npm install command is its unexpected behavior that it may mutate the package-lock.json, whereas npm ci only uses the versions specified in the lockfile and produces an error
if the package-lock.json and package.json are out of sync
if a package-lock.json is missing.
Hence, running npm install locally, esp. in larger teams with multiple developers, may lead to lots of conflicts within the package-lock.json and developers to decide to completely delete the package-lock.json instead.
Yet there is a strong use-case for being able to trust that the project's dependencies resolve repeatably in a reliable way across different machines.
From a package-lock.json you get exactly that: a known-to-work state.
In the past, I had projects without package-lock.json / npm-shrinkwrap.json / yarn.lock files whose build would fail one day because a random dependency got a breaking update.
Those issue are hard to resolve as you sometimes have to guess what the last working version was.
If you want to add a new dependency, you still run npm install {dependency}. If you want to upgrade, use either npm update {dependency} or npm install ${dependendency}#{version} and commit the changed package-lock.json.
If an upgrade fails, you can revert to the last known working package-lock.json.
To quote npm doc:
It is highly recommended you commit the generated package lock to
source control: this will allow anyone else on your team, your
deployments, your CI/continuous integration, and anyone else who runs
npm install in your package source to get the exact same dependency
tree that you were developing on. Additionally, the diffs from these
changes are human-readable and will inform you of any changes npm has
made to your node_modules, so you can notice if any transitive
dependencies were updated, hoisted, etc.
And in regards to the difference between npm ci vs npm install:
The project must have an existing package-lock.json or npm-shrinkwrap.json.
If dependencies in the package lock do not match those in package.json, npm ci will exit with an error, instead of updating
the package lock.
npm ci can only install entire projects at a time: individual dependencies cannot be added with this command.
If a node_modules is already present, it will be automatically removed before npm ci begins its install.
It will never write to package.json or any of the package-locks: installs are essentially frozen.
Note: I posted a similar answer here
Yes, it's intended to be checked in. I want to suggest that it gets its own unique commit. We find that it adds a lot of noise to our diffs.
Yes, the best practice is to check-in (YES, CHECK-IN)
I agree that it will cause a lot of noise or conflict when seeing the diff. But the benefits are:
guarantee exact same version of every package between your dev and prod environments. This part is the most important when building in different environments at different times. You may use ^1.2.3 in your package.json, but how can you ensure each time npm install will pick up the same version in your dev machine and in the build server, especially those indirect dependency packages? Well, package-lock.json will ensure that. (With the help of npm ci which installs packages based on lock file)
it improves the installation process.
it helps with new audit feature npm audit fix.
I don't commit this file in my projects. What's the point ?
It's generated
It's the cause of a SHA1 code integrity err in gitlab with gitlab-ci.yml builds
Though it's true that I never use ^ in my package.json for libs because I had bad experiences with it.
To the people complaining about the noise when doing git diff:
git diff -- . ':(exclude)*package-lock.json' -- . ':(exclude)*yarn.lock'
What I did was use an alias:
alias gd="git diff --ignore-all-space --ignore-space-at-eol --ignore-space-change --ignore-blank-lines -- . ':(exclude)*package-lock.json' -- . ':(exclude)*yarn.lock'"
To ignore package-lock.json in diffs for the entire repository (everyone using it), you can add this to .gitattributes:
package-lock.json binary
yarn.lock binary
This will result in diffs that show "Binary files a/package-lock.json and b/package-lock.json differ whenever the package lock file was changed. Additionally, some Git services (notably GitLab, but not GitHub) will also exclude these files (no more 10k lines changed!) from the diffs when viewing online when doing this.
Yes, you can commit this file. From the npm's official docs:
package-lock.json is automatically generated for any operations where npm modifies either the node_modules tree, or package.json. It describes the exact tree that was generated, such that subsequent installs are able to generate identical trees, regardless of intermediate dependency updates.
This file is intended to be committed into source repositories[.]
Yes, it's a standard practice to commit package-lock.json.
The main reason for committing package-lock.json is that everyone in the project is on the same package version.
Pros:
If you follow strict versioning and don't allow updating to major versions automatically to save yourself from backward-incompatible changes in third-party packages committing package-lock helps a lot.
If you update a particular package, it gets updated in package-lock.json and everyone using the repository gets updated to that particular version when they take the pull of your changes.
Cons:
It can make your pull requests look ugly :)
npm install won't make sure that everyone in the project is on the same package version. npm ci will help with this.
Disable package-lock.json globally
type the following in your terminal:
npm config set package-lock false
this really work for me like magic
All answers say "YES" but that also depend of the project, the doc says:
One key detail about package-lock.json is that it cannot be published, and it will be ignored if found in any place other than the toplevel package.
This mean that you don't need to publish on npm your package-lock.json for dependency but you need to use package-lock.json in your repo to lock the version of your test dependency, build dependencies…
However, If your are using lerna for managing projects with multiple packages, you should put the package.json only on the root of your repo, not in each subpackage are created with npm init. You will get something like that :
.git
lerna.json
package.json
package-lock.json <--- here
packages/a/package.json
packages/a/lib/index.js
packages/b/package.json
packages/b/lib/index.js
My use of npm is to generate minified/uglified css/js and to generate the javascript needed in pages served by a django application. In my applications, Javascript runs on the page to create animations, some times perform ajax calls, work within a VUE framework and/or work with the css. If package-lock.json has some overriding control over what is in package.json, then it may be necessary that there is one version of this file. In my experience it either does not effect what is installed by npm install, or if it does, It has not to date adversely affected the applications I deploy to my knowledge. I don't use mongodb or other such applications that are traditionally thin client.
I remove package-lock.json from repo
because npm install generates this file, and npm install is part of the deploy process on each server that runs the app. Version control of node and npm are done manually on each server, but I am careful that they are the same.
When npm install is run on the server, it changes package-lock.json,
and if there are changes to a file that is recorded by the repo on the server, the next deploy WONT allow you to pull new changes from origin. That is
you can't deploy because the pull will overwrite the changes that have been made to package-lock.json.
You can't even overwrite a locally generated package-lock.json with what is on the repo (reset hard origin master), as npm will complain when ever you issue a command if the package-lock.json does not reflect what is in node_modules due to npm install, thus breaking the deploy. Now if this indicates that slightly different versions have been installed in node_modules, once again that has never caused me problems.
If node_modules is not on your repo (and it should not be), then package-lock.json should be ignored.
If I am missing something, please correct me in the comments, but the point that versioning is taken from this file makes no sense. The file package.json has version numbers in it, and I assume this file is the one used to build packages when npm install occurs, as when I remove it, npm install complains as follows:
jason#localhost:introcart_wagtail$ rm package.json
jason#localhost:introcart_wagtail$ npm install
npm WARN saveError ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/jason/webapps/introcart_devtools/introcart_wagtail/package.json'
and the build fails, however when installing node_modules or applying npm to build js/css, no complaint is made if I remove package-lock.json
jason#localhost:introcart_wagtail$ rm package-lock.json
jason#localhost:introcart_wagtail$ npm run dev
> introcart#1.0.0 dev /home/jason/webapps/introcart_devtools/introcart_wagtail
> NODE_ENV=development webpack --progress --colors --watch --mode=development
10% building 0/1 modules 1 active ...
Committing package-lock.json to the source code version control means that the project will use a specific version of dependencies that may or may not match those defined in package.json. while the dependency has a specific version without any Caret (^) and Tilde (~) as you can see, that's mean the dependency will not be updated to the most recent version. and npm install will pick up the same version as well as we need it for our current version of Angular.
Note : package-lock.json highly recommended to commit it IF I added any Caret (^) and Tilde (~) to the dependency to be updated during the CI.
In my node.js project, I had using yarn installed the dependency #nestjs/jwt, now I want to uninstall it since I am not using it.
I run yarn remove #nestjs/jwt. It was successful. I checked my package.json, it was removed. But when I check the yarn.lock file, it is still showing. Why is that?
My git add -p yarn.lock shows me:
-"#nestjs/jwt#8.0.0", "#nestjs/jwt#^8.0.0":
+"#nestjs/jwt#^8.0.0":
version "8.0.0"
resolved "https://registry.yarnpkg.com/#nestjs/jwt/-/jwt-8.0.0.tgz#6c811c17634252dd1qcd5dabf409db4692b812da"
integrity sha512-fz2LQgYY2zmuD8S+8UE215anwKyXlnB/1FwJMLVR47clNfMeFMK8WCxmn6xd0hF5JKuV1crO6FVabb1qWzDxqQ==
Besides packages you explicitly install, packages depend on other packages. To see a graph of any dependents of this package you have installed, do:
yarn why #nestjs/jwt -R
Yarn.lock is what yarn uses to know what versions of each dependency are installed so it can get those exact versions again when you run yarn install on a new machine. Try running 'yarn upgrade'. This should create a new yarn.lock file without those dependencies.
I have understood the details from the below link but still when to use which file is a question ?
https://docs.npmjs.com/files/package-lock.json
package.json
Contains relevant metadata for your project including dependancies, helper scripts and other general metadata.
Running npm install --save <package> or yarn add <package> adds dependancies to this file.
Between the three files listed, this is the only one you should ever need to interact with.
package-lock.json and yarn.lock
Is an auto generated file that describes the exact state of your application dependancies the last time packages where added or modified.
More specifically it guarantees the order of package installations between users - hence why it is recommended to be git committed.
yarn.lock is generated when running yarn specific commands.
package-lock.json is generated when running npm specific commands.
I installed a package with yarn add --dev, run its setup process and during it, the package installed several other packages and added those to package.json (in devDependencies), I assume with npm. Great, but now my yarn.lock is out of sync.
What is the correct, non-manual way of syncing yarn.lock to the current state of package.json?
Edit: yarn check shows the missing packages as:
error Lockfile does not contain pattern: <package>#<version>
But it doesn't add them.
Run yarn install, or just yarn.
The lock file is updated in its entirety on any change to dependencies, i.e. when you run a yarn command.
From the Yarn docs:
Your yarn.lock file is auto-generated and should be handled entirely by Yarn. As you add/upgrade/remove dependencies with the Yarn CLI, it will automatically update your yarn.lock file. Do not edit this file directly as it is easy to break something.
(Emphasis my own)
If you ever face a checksum issue this will solve it,
YARN_CHECKSUM_BEHAVIOR=update yarn
I'm quite new to ReactNative so sorry if it's obvious, but..
Each RN project init-ed via CLI has a large number of node modules stored in project_root/node_modules. Not that I would mind, but if you have several projects it seems redundant and takes up time/space to move it to the source versioning system.
Wouldn't it be possible to retrieve all these same modules from the general node_modules on the machine instead ?
You never want to store dependencies nested in node_modules in your source control... it defeats the whole purpose of versioning and dependencies in general. Your package.json file will specify the versions so when you run npm install it knows exactly which dependencies to grab.
As an alternative, Yarn is an up and rising package client that Facebook developed that does a much better job of caching your packages locally so that way if multiple projects reuse the same depencencies, it will still satisfy the need to keep them in node_modules but doesn't need to perform http requests for each one.
Yarn doesn't replace NPM as a package registry, just a better client to download, maintain, and cache those packages.
Yarn also adds a yarn.lock file (similar to Ruby's Gemfile.lock) that allows you to lock in the specific versions used in your app, regardles of the package.json. This file can be stored in version control, which is probably what you were wanting to achieve by saving the node_modules in version control.
Some good reads...
Yarn vs NPM
Scotch.io Yarn Tutorial
Why I'm working on Yarn (Yehuda Katz)
I would echo Brad's answer: Don't put node_modules in version control. npm install will install the correct versions from the package.json. Just put package.json in version control, not node_modules.
However, if you still want to save disk space, you can install some of your dependencies in a general node_modules folder by using the link option:
npm config set link true -g
You can read more about link here: https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/config#link.
Note that you must not include node_modules in your version control when using this option since npm will put symlinks to the globally installed packages in node_modules. The global install location varies from machine to machine, so if node_modules is in version control, it may link to non-existent locations.