npm-explain

Explain installed packages

Table of contents

Synopsis

npm explain <folder | specifier>

Description

This command will print the chain of dependencies causing a given package to be installed in the current project.

Positional arguments can be either folders within node_modules, or name@version-range specifiers, which will select the dependency relationships to explain.

For example, running npm explain glob within npm’s source tree will show:

glob@7.1.6
node_modules/glob
  glob@"^7.1.4" from the root project

glob@7.1.1 dev
node_modules/tacks/node_modules/glob
  glob@"^7.0.5" from rimraf@2.6.2
  node_modules/tacks/node_modules/rimraf
    rimraf@"^2.6.2" from tacks@1.3.0
    node_modules/tacks
      dev tacks@"^1.3.0" from the root project

To explain just the package residing at a specific folder, pass that as the argument to the command. This can be useful when trying to figure out exactly why a given dependency is being duplicated to satisfy conflicting version requirements within the project.

$ npm explain node_modules/nyc/node_modules/find-up
find-up@3.0.0 dev
node_modules/nyc/node_modules/find-up
  find-up@"^3.0.0" from nyc@14.1.1
  node_modules/nyc
    nyc@"^14.1.1" from tap@14.10.8
    node_modules/tap
      dev tap@"^14.10.8" from the root project

Configuration

json

Show information in JSON format.

See Also