Node Modules

#node #npm #packages

node_modules is where node keeps all their dependencies

one good thing of node_modules is that you can easily modify an external package code inside node_modules and test your fix before sending a pull request

node_modules also applies the colocation pattern, where the dependencies are close to the project

If you check C,C++,python,ruby, GO and other, the deps are not close to where there are used. So it is much harder to modify deps and contribute back

if you use monorepo with yarn workspaces you gonna have many node_modules. One at the root and one at each package level. Yarn will hoist same package version range to the node_modules in the root.

Hoist caused many problems as most tool have the wrong assumptions that node_modules is besides the package, and also the package

if your node_modules is big it is be slow to load packages, as node tranverse the node_modules to find it

reduce node modules techniques

• https://tsh.io/blog/reduce-node-modules-for-better-performance/

• use -production flag

• node-prune / modclean

https://gist.github.com/greim/e8e1bd3b1ed08a7505ce

• move deps to devDepencies
• improve .npmignore

only pick select fields on package.json

• https://github.com/n1ru4l/use-async-effect/blob/7da6f9915832d63abcf6c93775e8dcbdd70f0cb6/scripts/prepare-deploy-package-json.js

const pickFields = [
  'name',
  'version',
  'license',
  'author',
  'homepage',
  'repository',
  'bugs',
  'keywords',
  'module',
  'main',
  'typings',
  'dependencies',
  'peerDependencies',
  'files',
];

Links

Colocation