npm-ls

List installed packages

Table of contents

Synopsis

npm ls <package-spec>

alias: list

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@9.5.1 /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 to 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

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

Whether or not to output JSON data, rather than the normal output.

Not supported by all npm commands.

long

Show extended information in ls, search, and help-search.

parseable

Output parseable results from commands that write to standard output. For npm search, this will be tab-separated table format.

global

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.

depth

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

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.

Used with npm ls, limiting output to only those packages that are linked.

package-lock-only

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

When set to true, npm uses unicode characters in the tree output. When false, it uses ascii characters instead of unicode glyphs.

workspace

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:

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

Set to true to run the command in the context of all configured workspaces.

Explicitly setting this to false will cause commands like install to ignore workspaces altogether. When not set explicitly:

This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.

include-workspace-root

Include the workspace root when workspaces are enabled for a command.

When false, specifying individual workspaces via the workspace config, or all workspaces via the workspaces flag, will cause npm to operate only on the specified workspaces, and not on the root project.

This value is not exported to the environment for child processes.

When set file: protocol dependencies will be packed and installed as regular dependencies instead of creating a symlink. This option has no effect on workspaces.

See Also