Uninstall a Package with npm
npm makes it easy to uninstall packages. Running
npm uninstall <package> uninstalls the given package. For example, when you run npm uninstall mongoose
from the Mastering JS GitHub repo, npm prints the
below output:
$ npm uninstall mongoose
removed 22 packages and audited 1204 packages in 3.311s
found 0 vulnerabilities
$ After running npm uninstall mongoose, the node_modules directory no longer contains Mongoose, and calling
require('mongoose') will fail.
$ ls -l node_modules/ | grep "mongoose$"
$
$ node -e "require('mongoose')"
internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:800
throw err;
^
Error: Cannot find module 'mongoose'
$ What Does npm uninstall Do?
npm uninstall does a little more than just rm -rf ./node_modules/mongoose. Although deleting the node_modules/mongoose
directory works, it leaves Mongoose's dependencies in node_modules.
Notice that the output of npm uninstall says it removed 22 packages:
$ npm uninstall mongoose
removed 22 packages and audited 1204 packages in 3.311s
found 0 vulnerabilities
$ Those are packages that Mongoose depends on, but no other package depends on, so they're safe to remove.
The --no-save Flag
npm uninstall also removes the package from your package.json, which means subsequent
npm install won't install that package. This is a convenience that saves you an extra step when you want to
permanently remove a package from a JavaScript project.
However, there are cases when you may want to uninstall a package without modifying package.json. For example,
you may want to test that your app still works even if a certain package is missing. In that case, you can use
npm uninstall --no-save:
$ npm uninstall mongoose --no-save
removed 22 packages and audited 1204 packages in 3.311s
found 0 vulnerabilities
$
$ cat package.json | grep "mongoose"
"mongoose": "5.x",
"mongoose-beautiful-unique-validation": "7.x",
$