npm 5 was released today and one of the new features include deterministic installs with the creation of a package-lock.json file.
Is this file supposed to be kept in source control?
I’m assuming it’s similar to yarn.lock and composer.lock, both of which are supposed to be kept in source control.
Yes, package-lock.json is intended to be checked into source control. If you’re using npm 5+, you may see this notice on the command line: created a lockfile as package-lock.json. You should commit this file. According to npm help package-lock.json:
package-lock.jsonis automatically generated for any operations where npm
modifies either thenode_modulestree, orpackage.json. It describes the
exact tree that was generated, such that subsequent installs are able to
generate identical trees, regardless of intermediate dependency updates.This file is intended to be committed into source repositories, and serves
various purposes:
Describe a single representation of a dependency tree such that teammates, deployments, and continuous integration are guaranteed to install exactly the same dependencies.
Provide a facility for users to “time-travel” to previous states of
node_moduleswithout having to commit the directory itself.To facilitate greater visibility of tree changes through readable source control diffs.
And optimize the installation process by allowing npm to skip repeated metadata resolutions for previously-installed packages.
One key detail about
package-lock.jsonis that it cannot be published, and it
will be ignored if found in any place other than the toplevel package. It shares
a format with npm-shrinkwrap.json, which is essentially the same file, but
allows publication. This is not recommended unless deploying a CLI tool or
otherwise using the publication process for producing production packages.If both
package-lock.jsonandnpm-shrinkwrap.jsonare present in the root of
a package,package-lock.jsonwill be completely ignored.