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NPM unistall unused packages in Node.js

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Consider, you’re developing a shiny new node.js project and according to your need, design, and business logic, you’ve installed many NPM packages, but at the end you realized, that you don’t need many packages, so now you want to remove all unused npm packages and sub-modules of it, which is not defined in package.json, for that purpose npm cli, provides a method, which we will discuss and learn how to use it in this node.js how to tutorial, so let’s learn npm command to uninstall unused packages in Node.js.

Article Contents

What is npm prune and how to use it?

npm prune <pkg> --production

This npm command can be used to remove not required packages from your node_modules directory and devDependencies modules if NODE_ENV environment variable is set to production and if you don’t want remove devDependencies then you need to set  --production=false

Now let’s see, how to use npm prune with example:

How to use npm prune with an example?

steps by step procedure to use npm prune:

Steps to Remove unused packages from Node.js

  1. First, remove the npm packages from packages.json file and save the file.
  2. To remove any specific node package run the command  npm prune <pkg>
  3. run the npm prune command to remove unused or not required node packages from Node.js
  4. if you want to remove devDependencies then run prune command with –production flag npm prune --production=true
  5. if you don’t want to unbuild devDependencies then you need to set  –production flag false npm prune --production=false

If you see an npm module remain in your node_modules directory even after running npm prune even though it’s not in package.json, then you need to  check your npm-shrinkwrap.json if it’s present then you need to delete it and then You can  follow below method to solve this problem.

See also  Get List of all files in a directory in Node.js

If you want to completely remove the node_modules directory and want to do a fresh npm install then this below one-line can be very useful:

rm -rf node_modules && npm install

That was quick!

But, This can take some time depending upon the size of the node_modules directory.

If you have any queries, please comment below and thanks for reading this how-to guide.

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