Feb 7, 2024

npmgraph

#javascript #npm

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I've started to loosely try to get involved in James Garbutt's npm ecosystem cleanup effort, and in that process I came across https://npmgraph.js.org. This project can analyze a published npm module or a standalone package.json and visualize its dependency tree. More importantly, it can find issues with your dependency tree such as multiple versions of the same dependency or deprecated dependencies, giving your team easy grunt work to do.

In my experience, one of the hardest problems in programming is identifying, "taskifying", and then prioritizing maintenance work that doesn't have direct payoff. While npmgraph can't change how your organization prioritizes work, it can certainly help identify work and turn it into tasks for your team. This is really valuable, because clear checklists that you can burn down to Inbox Zero help distribute work. npmgraph fits that niche very well.

Try it out on your own project! You can also run it from CLI:

npm i -g npmgraph-cli
npmgraph -f ./path/to/package.json

This will open a browser with a URL that contains your package.json with the same results as if started from the browser.

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