Install other package.json dependencies

Question

Simple question : Is it possible, in a package.json, to reference another package.json, and install its dependencies ? Thank you.

Answer 1

Yes, this is possible, and this is automatically done by npm install.

If you have pkg-a that depends on pkg-b, including pkg-a in your dependencies will install both pkg-a and pkg-b when running npm install. That is because dependencies are actually references to the package.json of other packages. NPM, upon running install, builds a dependency tree of all the packages that are indirectly required by your current project, and installs all of them in the node_modules directory, and keeps track of them all in package-lock.json.