Easy way to list node modules I have npm linked?

Question

I am looking for a command that will list the names of global modules that I have npm link\'d to local copies, also listing the local path.

In fact, a list

Answer 1

If you want a nice colored output from npm list, you may like:

\ls -F node_modules | sed -n 's/@$//p' | xargs npm ls -g --depth 0

which gives in my current playground dir:

+-- color@0.11.1 
+-- grunt@0.4.5
+-- http-server@0.8.5 
+-- jsdom@8.0.2 
+-- jsonfile@2.2.3 
+-- underscore@1.8.3 
+-- xmlserializer@0.3.3 
`-- zombie@4.2.1 

It makes a few assumptions but it should work in most cases, or be easy to adapt with the explanations below.

• use \ls to bypass possible aliases on your ls command
• the -F option adds an '@' indicator for links
• the sed command selects those links and removes the indicator
• the xargs part passes previous output as arguments to npm ...
• npm is invoked with
  • list or ls to list modules with versions
    • replace with ll to get details about each listed module.
  • -g for the global modules and
  • --depth 0 for a shallow listing (optional)
  • --long false (default with 'list').

Issue: for some reason npm gives extraneous entries for me at the moment (non colored). They would be those I had "npm unlink"ed.

For "a list of all globally installed modules" in current npm path, you just do

npm list -g

For further needs you may want to have a look at

npm help folders

You cannot follow symlinks backwards unless you scan your whole filesystem and (then that's not a npm specific question).

For quickly finding files and directories by name, I use locate which works on an index rebuilt usually once a day.

locate '*/node_modules'

and start working from there (you may want to refine the search with --regexp option.