NPM clean modules

Question

You can just delete the node_module directory

rm -rf node_modules/

There is actually special command for this job

npm ci

It will delete node_modules directory and will install packages with respect your package-lock.json file

More info: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/ci.html

I added this to my package.json:

"build": "npm build",
"clean": "rm -rf node_modules", 
"reinstall": "npm run clean && npm install", 
"rebuild": "npm run clean && npm install && npm run build",

Seems to work well.

Try https://github.com/voidcosmos/npkill

npx npkill

it will find all node_modules and let you remove them.

You can take advantage of the 'npm cache' command which downloads the package tarball and unpacks it into the npm cache directory.

The source can then be copied in.

Using ideas gleaned from https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/npm-/mwLuZZkHkfU I came up with the following node script. No warranties, YMMV, etcetera.

var fs = require('fs'),
path = require('path'),
exec = require('child_process').exec,
util = require('util');

var packageFileName = 'package.json';
var modulesDirName = 'node_modules';
var cacheDirectory = process.cwd();
var npmCacheAddMask = 'npm cache add %s@%s; echo %s';
var sourceDirMask = '%s/%s/%s/package';
var targetDirMask = '%s/node_modules/%s';

function deleteFolder(folder) {
    if (fs.existsSync(folder)) {
        var files = fs.readdirSync(folder);
        files.forEach(function(file) {
            file = folder + "/" + file;
            if (fs.lstatSync(file).isDirectory()) {
                deleteFolder(file);
            } else {
                fs.unlinkSync(file);
            }
        });
        fs.rmdirSync(folder);
    }
}

function downloadSource(folder) {
    var packageFile = path.join(folder, packageFileName);
    if (fs.existsSync(packageFile)) {
        var data = fs.readFileSync(packageFile);
        var package = JSON.parse(data);

        function getVersion(data) {
            var version = data.match(/-([^-]+)\.tgz/);
            return version[1];
        }

        var callback = function(error, stdout, stderr) {
            var dependency = stdout.trim();
            var version = getVersion(stderr);
            var sourceDir = util.format(sourceDirMask, cacheDirectory, dependency, version);
            var targetDir = util.format(targetDirMask, folder, dependency);
            var modulesDir = folder + '/' + modulesDirName;

            if (!fs.existsSync(modulesDir)) {
                fs.mkdirSync(modulesDir);
            }

            fs.renameSync(sourceDir, targetDir);
            deleteFolder(cacheDirectory + '/' + dependency);
            downloadSource(targetDir);
        };

        for (dependency in package.dependencies) {
            var version = package.dependencies[dependency];
            exec(util.format(npmCacheAddMask, dependency, version, dependency), callback);
        }
    }
}

if (!fs.existsSync(path.join(process.cwd(), packageFileName))) {
    console.log(util.format("Unable to find file '%s'.", packageFileName));
    process.exit();
}

deleteFolder(path.join(process.cwd(), modulesDirName));
process.env.npm_config_cache = cacheDirectory;
downloadSource(process.cwd());