| NPM-EXPLAIN(1) | NPM-EXPLAIN(1) |
npm-explain - Explain installed packages
npm explain <folder | specifier> alias: why
This command will print the chain of dependencies causing a given package to be installed in the current project.
Positional arguments can be either folders within node_modules, or name@version-range specifiers, which will select the dependency relationships to explain.
For example, running npm explain glob within npm's source tree will show:
glob@7.1.6 node_modules/glob
glob@"^7.1.4" from the root project glob@7.1.1 dev node_modules/tacks/node_modules/glob
glob@"^7.0.5" from rimraf@2.6.2
node_modules/tacks/node_modules/rimraf
rimraf@"^2.6.2" from tacks@1.3.0
node_modules/tacks
dev tacks@"^1.3.0" from the root project
To explain just the package residing at a specific folder, pass that as the argument to the command. This can be useful when trying to figure out exactly why a given dependency is being duplicated to satisfy conflicting version requirements within the project.
$ npm explain node_modules/nyc/node_modules/find-up find-up@3.0.0 dev node_modules/nyc/node_modules/find-up
find-up@"^3.0.0" from nyc@14.1.1
node_modules/nyc
nyc@"^14.1.1" from tap@14.10.8
node_modules/tap
dev tap@"^14.10.8" from the root project
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