grunt-clean-npm

grunt-clean-npm

Cleans node_module for the local project when there was any changes in package.json dependencies or devDependencies. As npm has issues with resolving dependencies when you already downloaded some old versions, it is better to remove node_modules. But to do it each time is not a solution, as to download all of your dependencies when you have a few of them could take a time, so better to be a bit smarter and do it only when you really need it.

Setup

If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:

npm install grunt-clean-npm --save-dev

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-clean-npm');

Using grunt-clean-npm

It consists of 2 tasks, first one removes the node_modules if md5 wasn't generated yet or md5 is different.

grunt remove-node-modules

the second one generates the hash inside of node_modules.

grunt generate-hash

So my advice to use it in the next order:

grunt remove-node-modules
grunt npm-install
grunt generate-hash

How it works

Module checks whether the dependencies or devDependencies in package.json are changed, and if so removes node_modules folder.