Why does the npm-remote-ls command return more results than Yarn install command for the babel-loader package?

Question

I'm trying to download npm dependencies for offline use.

when I run npm-remote-ls I get hundreds of dependencies:

> npm-remote-ls --name babel-loader --flatten
[ 'babel-loader@7.1.4',
....
....
... 770 more items ]

When I use Yarn to get the files, I have 18 *.tgz packages

> yarn config set yarn-offline-mirror ~/repository
> yarn install
> ls -l ~/repository
total 124
babel-loader-7.1.4.tgz
find-cache-dir-1.0.0.tgz
mkdirp-0.5.1.tgz
loader-utils-1.1.0.tgz
commondir-1.0.1.tgz
minimist-0.0.8.tgz
pkg-dir-2.0.0.tgz
big.js-3.2.0.tgz
make-dir-1.3.0.tgz
find-up-2.1.0.tgz
emojis-list-2.1.0.tgz
pify-3.0.0.tgz
locate-path-2.0.0.tgz
p-locate-2.0.0.tgz
path-exists-3.0.0.tgz
p-limit-1.3.0.tgz
p-try-1.0.0.tgz
json5-0.5.1.tgz

Any idea why Yarn caches such a small number of packages?

I'm using Yarn 1.7.0, npm 3.10.10, and Node v6.14.3

Thanks, Eyal

Answer 1

The npm install command will install dependencies from the package.json file and allows you to add new packages. yarn install only installs the dependencies listed in yarn.lock or package.json , in that order.

for more to know about see this Yarn vs npm: CLI Differences