202

I deleted it by accident and have made many changes to package.json since. An npm install or npm update do not generate package-lock.json anymore. I tried clearing my npm cache and my nvm cache, but nothing seems to be working. I tried it on several versions of Node.js (6.10.3 Node.js - 3.10.10 npm is what I would like it to work on), and it doesn't work on any.

Is there a way to force npm to generate the package-lock.json file?

Big Money
  • 6,272
  • 5
  • 20
  • 32
  • 2
    I think package-lock.json is specific to npm 5 – Brett Merrifield Oct 09 '17 at 19:44
  • 3
    `package-lock.json` is generating automatically by default in npm starting from v5, in the previous versions, the lock file name was `npm-shrinkwrap.json` and it was generated manually using `npm shrinkwrap` command. – alexmac Oct 09 '17 at 19:49
  • @BrettMerrifield Thank you! That was my problem. I updated to `node 8.6.0` and with it `npm 5.3.0` and it worked. – Big Money Oct 09 '17 at 19:49
  • **Check your `.gitignore`.** I accidentally had `package-lock.json` in the `.gitignore` somehow and because `package-lock.json` wasn't showing up in the `git status` it was throwing me off. – Joshua Pinter Mar 19 '19 at 15:25

6 Answers6

217

In npm 6.x and 7.x you can use

npm i --package-lock-only

According to https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/install.html

The --package-lock-only argument will only update the package-lock.json, instead of checking node_modules and downloading dependencies.

Janusz Przybylski
  • 2,196
  • 1
  • 5
  • 5
  • 19
    This is the correct answer now, others are old and wont work. – Vaibhav Singh Jun 25 '19 at 07:57
  • Any clue how to generate a package-lock.json without devDependencies? I need this for clean production installs. `npm i --package-lock-only --only=production` doesn't seem to work. – Robert May 13 '20 at 15:07
  • I don't think it's possible to generate `package-lock.json` only for production dependencies. But if you run `npm i --only=production` it should install only production dependencies. So your build process could look like this: install all dependencies, build app, remove `node_modules` and install only production dependencies. – Janusz Przybylski May 14 '20 at 14:23
199

By default, package-lock.json is updated whenever you run npm install. However, this can be disabled globally by setting package-lock=false in ~/.npmrc.

When the global package-lock=false setting is active, you can still force a project’s package-lock.json file to be updated by running:

npm install --package-lock

This command is the only surefire way of forcing a package-lock.json update.

Mathias Bynens
  • 130,201
  • 49
  • 208
  • 240
16

This is answered in the comments; package-lock.json is a feature in npm v5 and higher. npm shrinkwrap is how you create a lockfile in all versions of npm.

LJHarb
  • 12,303
  • 2
  • 26
  • 34
  • 1
    note, however, that `package-lock.json`s are not the exact same thing as shrinkwrap files. – strugee Jan 09 '18 at 04:59
  • 7
    in npm 5+, they are, in fact, exactly the same, down to every detail, except for one thing: `npm-shrinkwrap.json` will be published to the registry, and `package-lock.json` will not. – LJHarb Jan 09 '18 at 09:20
  • 6
    Yep. That's a pretty important difference though, which is why I left my comment. – strugee Jan 09 '18 at 18:19
  • 2
    `npm shrinkwrap` generates `npm-shrinkwrap.json`, but how do you generate `package-lock.json` ? – Vic Mar 30 '18 at 22:22
  • 5
    It’s automatic in npm 5+, or you can force it in 5+ with `--package-lock` – LJHarb Mar 31 '18 at 02:41
  • @Vic Just rename npm-shrinkwrap.json to package-lock.json. They have the same format. – BoomShadow Apr 30 '20 at 16:49
2

As several answer explained the you should run:

npm i

BUT if it does not solve...

Check the version of your npm executable. (For me it was 3.x.x which doesn't uses the package-lock.json (at all))

npm -v

It should be at least 5.x.x (which introduced the package-lock.json file.)

To update npm on Linux, follow these instructions.

For more details about package files, please read this medium story.

Charmis Varghese
  • 455
  • 3
  • 9
betontalpfa
  • 2,402
  • 1
  • 23
  • 44
-1

If your npm version is lower than version 5 then install the higher version for getting the automatic generation of package-lock.json.

Example: Upgrade your current npm to version 6.14.0 

npm i -g npm@6.14.0

You could view the latest npm version list by 

npm view npm versions
SridharKritha
  • 5,151
  • 2
  • 34
  • 32
-1

When working with local packages, the only way I found to reliably regenerate the package-lock.json file is to delete it, as well as in the linked modules and all corresponding node_modules folders and let it be regenerated with npm i

trias
  • 549
  • 5
  • 8