npm-ls
List installed packagesTable of contents
Synopsis
npm ls [[<@scope>/]<pkg> ...]
aliases: list, la, ll
Description
This command will print to stdout all the versions of packages that are
installed, as well as their dependencies when --all
is specified, in a
tree structure.
Note: to get a “bottoms up” view of why a given package is included in the
tree at all, use npm explain
.
Positional arguments are name@version-range
identifiers, which will limit
the results to only the paths to the packages named. Note that nested
packages will also show the paths to the specified packages. For
example, running npm ls promzard
in npm’s source tree will show:
npm@7.24.1 /path/to/npm
└─┬ init-package-json@0.0.4
└── promzard@0.1.5
It will print out extraneous, missing, and invalid packages.
If a project specifies git urls for dependencies these are shown in parentheses after the name@version to make it easier for users to recognize potential forks of a project.
The tree shown is the logical dependency tree, based on package
dependencies, not the physical layout of your node_modules
folder.
When run as ll
or la
, it shows extended information by default.
Note: Design Changes Pending
The npm ls
command’s output and behavior made a ton of sense when npm
created a node_modules
folder that naively nested every dependency. In
such a case, the logical dependency graph and physical tree of packages on
disk would be roughly identical.
With the advent of automatic install-time deduplication of dependencies in
npm v3, the ls
output was modified to display the logical dependency
graph as a tree structure, since this was more useful to most users.
However, without using npm ls -l
, it became impossible show where a
package was actually installed much of the time!
With the advent of automatic installation of peerDependencies
in npm v7,
this gets even more curious, as peerDependencies
are logically
“underneath” their dependents in the dependency graph, but are always
physically at or above their location on disk.
Also, in the years since npm got an ls
command (in version 0.0.2!),
dependency graphs have gotten much larger as a general rule. Therefore, in
order to avoid dumping an excessive amount of content to the terminal, npm ls
now only shows the top level dependencies, unless --all
is
provided.
A thorough re-examination of the use cases, intention, behavior, and output
of this command, is currently underway. Expect significant changes to at
least the default human-readable npm ls
output in npm v8.
Configuration
all
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
When running npm outdated
and npm ls
, setting --all
will show all
outdated or installed packages, rather than only those directly depended
upon by the current project.
json
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
Whether or not to output JSON data, rather than the normal output.
- In
npm pkg set
it enables parsing set values with JSON.parse() before saving them to yourpackage.json
.
Not supported by all npm commands.
long
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
Show extended information in ls
, search
, and help-search
.
parseable
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
Output parseable results from commands that write to standard output. For
npm search
, this will be tab-separated table format.
global
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
Operates in “global” mode, so that packages are installed into the prefix
folder instead of the current working directory. See
folders for more on the differences in behavior.
- packages are installed into the
{prefix}/lib/node_modules
folder, instead of the current working directory. - bin files are linked to
{prefix}/bin
- man pages are linked to
{prefix}/share/man
depth
- Default:
Infinity
if--all
is set, otherwise1
- Type: null or Number
The depth to go when recursing packages for npm ls
.
If not set, npm ls
will show only the immediate dependencies of the root
project. If --all
is set, then npm will show all dependencies by default.
omit
- Default: ‘dev’ if the
NODE_ENV
environment variable is set to ‘production’, otherwise empty. - Type: “dev”, “optional”, or “peer” (can be set multiple times)
Dependency types to omit from the installation tree on disk.
Note that these dependencies are still resolved and added to the
package-lock.json
or npm-shrinkwrap.json
file. They are just not
physically installed on disk.
If a package type appears in both the --include
and --omit
lists, then
it will be included.
If the resulting omit list includes 'dev'
, then the NODE_ENV
environment
variable will be set to 'production'
for all lifecycle scripts.
link
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
Used with npm ls
, limiting output to only those packages that are linked.
package-lock-only
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
If set to true, the current operation will only use the package-lock.json
,
ignoring node_modules
.
For update
this means only the package-lock.json
will be updated,
instead of checking node_modules
and downloading dependencies.
For list
this means the output will be based on the tree described by the
package-lock.json
, rather than the contents of node_modules
.
unicode
- Default: false on windows, true on mac/unix systems with a unicode locale,
as defined by the
LC_ALL
,LC_CTYPE
, orLANG
environment variables. - Type: Boolean
When set to true, npm uses unicode characters in the tree output. When false, it uses ascii characters instead of unicode glyphs.
workspace
- Default:
- Type: String (can be set multiple times)
Enable running a command in the context of the configured workspaces of the current project while filtering by running only the workspaces defined by this configuration option.
Valid values for the workspace
config are either:
- Workspace names
- Path to a workspace directory
- Path to a parent workspace directory (will result to selecting all of the nested workspaces)
When set for the npm init
command, this may be set to the folder of a
workspace which does not yet exist, to create the folder and set it up as a
brand new workspace within the project.
This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.
workspaces
- Default: false
- Type: Boolean
Enable running a command in the context of all the configured workspaces.
This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.