node_modules dir being included in module published to NPM registry

Question

I published my module to the NPM registry. When I installed it using

npm install --save-dev X

I see that the node_modules folder was included in the install, such that when I go to project Y which depends on X, I see:

Y/node_modules/X/node_modules

How is this possible?

My .npmignore file in my X project is as follows:

.idea
node_modules
bower_components
internal-docs

Anyone know what could be up?

Answer 1

You don't need to add node_modules to your .npmignore ; it is ignored by default :

Additionally, everything in node_modules is ignored, except for bundled dependencies. npm automatically handles this for you, so don't bother adding node_modules to .npmignore .

The npm install command will naturally install the package's dependencies that are listed in its package.json file. It is a normal part of the npm install process to install the whole dependencies tree, otherwise the package wouldn't really work.

If you want to be really sure, you can use the npm pack command to generate a tarball (similar to a zip file) that you can inspect and see what files are actually published when you run npm publish .