dependency-lint

dependency-lint

Lints your NPM dependencies and devDependencies reporting which node modules are

• missing and should be added to your dependencies or devDependencies
• unused and should be removed from your dependencies or devDependencies
• mislabeled and should be moved from dependencies to devDependencies or vice versa

Installation

Supported on Node.js versions 12, 14, 16

$ npm install dependency-lint

Usage

$ dependency-lint

To automatically remove unused dependencies and move mislabeled dependencies:

$ dependency-lint --auto-correct

How it works

dependency-lint compares the node modules listed in your package.json and the node modules it determines are used. A node module is used if:

• it is required in a javascript file (or a file that transpiles to javascript)
• one of its executables is used in a script in your package.json or in a shell script

Since this does not cover all the possible ways that a node module can be used, dependency-lint can be configured to ignore specific errors. Please create an issue anytime you need to use this, so we can discuss new ways to determine if and how a node module is used.

Configuration

Please see here for an explanation of all the options. Custom configuration should be placed at dependency-lint.yml in your project directory. You can create a configuration file by running

dependency-lint --generate-config

Any options not set in your configuration file will be given there default value.

Formatters

Three formatters are available and can be switched between with the --format option

dependency-lint --format <format>

• minimal (default) - prints only the modules with errors
• summary - prints all modules
• json - prints JSON of the form {dependencies, devDependencies} where each is array of objects with the keys
  • name - name of the module
  • files - list of the files that require the module or execute the module
  • scripts - list of scripts in your package.json that execute the module
  • error - null or one of the following strings: "missing", "should be dependency", "should be dev dependency", "unused"
  • errorIgnored - if dependency lint has been configured to ignore this error.

Changelog

7.1.0 (2021-07-24)

• Add windows testing to CI
• Update how listed dependency executables are found to reading the package.json files of your dependencies and devDependecies. Thus it is no longer possible to find missing modules via executable usage.

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