Visual Studio 2022 npm package manager

Question

Visual Studio 2022 npm package manager

Simone Trezzi 1

Hi, I have this situation in node.js projects in Visual Studio 2022.
My npm package manager shows all packages regardless of their state, as shown in the picture

I would like to see only the packages listed in package.json file. Is there a way to do that?

Thank you.

Best regards,
Simone

4 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Hi @Simone Trezzi ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

I don’t find a way to meet your requirement. Both Installed and listed in package.json package and Installed, but not explicitly listed in package.json package will show. And I’m afraid, they will only be sorted and displayed alphabetically, and cannot be grouped or hidden automatically.

Perhaps you can submit a feature suggestion ticket here: Developer Community.

Best Regards,
Tianyu

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Answer 2

Simone Trezzi 1

Hi, thank you for your answer.
The thing I don't understand about this "issue" is the fact that in other projects I don't see those "Installed, but not explicitly listed in package.json" npm packages.
Here's an example of a project in Visual Studio 2019:

Also I had a situation, with VS 2019, where some people were seeing those npm packages and other people not, and the project was the same.

Best regards,
Simone

Tianyu Sun-MSFT 34,436 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2022-03-09T09:35:50.293+00:00

Hi Simone, from the screenshot, indeed, the "Installed, but no explicitly listed in package.json" npm packages aren’t shown. I’d like to know if those packages which are not shown are really installed, could you help to confirm this(they should be stored in node_modules folder)?
OzarkaTexan 0 Reputation points

2024-08-28T14:34:25.4266667+00:00
I am also using VS2029, and see both npm packages listed, the ones in package.json and the ones not listed (but in package-lock.json). My question is: is this safe? Will I risk my application by having these not in package.json listed. How will it affect other users in my team who get the code from git?

This particular application is around 5-6 years old. Was written with VS 2025, and I recently opened it with VS 2029, compiled it, and work. But had issues compiling its UI part with

npm install

So I use

npm install --legacy-peer-deps

And it compiled fine, created node_modules and the app is working as intended. After reading this forum post, I have decided that I should leave my application as is, listing all npm packages. BUT your comments in this issue are very appreciated.

I also tried opening the application in VS 2022, but none of the solutions loaded!! For the moment I have to stay with VS 2019.

Regards

-Ozarka

Answer 3

Simone Trezzi 1

Here you can see an extract of the node_modules folder's content (the complete list is way too long...):

You can also see the dependencies written in package.json file:

It almost seems that in VS2022, the npm node shows all the sub-dependencies of all the packages.

Thank you, regards.
Simone

Tianyu Sun-MSFT 34,436 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2022-03-10T09:39:08.35+00:00

Hi Simone,

Thanks for sharing me the screenshots.

I see that there is a .vscode folder included in your project folder, did you use any other applications(like VS Code…) or extensions? Does it also happen for a newly created project(saved in an empty folder)? Besides, could you tell me the detailed version of VS 2019 which you are using?

Best Regards,
Tianyu
Simone Trezzi 1 Reputation point

2022-03-10T09:58:24.223+00:00

Hi.

I used VS code for debugging in that project, but in other projects where I didn't used it the situation is the same.
No extensions were used in any case.

When I create a new project in VS2019 I see only npm that are also listed in package.json file, if I use VS2022 I see the not listed packages as well.

My version of Visual Studio 2019 is 16.11.10.

It also happened that when a colleague downloaded a project of mine, VS showed all the sub-dependecies that I was not seeing (with VS2019 version 16.11.1).

Regards,
Simone
Tianyu Sun-MSFT 34,436 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2022-03-11T09:59:21.107+00:00

Hi @Simone Trezzi , I tested on two different machines with VS 2019 version 16.11.11 and version 16.11.9, and they both listed the “not listed in package.json” package under npm node.

I notice that, when you open the project, VS process will run in the background task and help to install/load the "not listed in package.json" packages(list) and it will cause them may not appear immediately, but will show them after loading well. Could you check and confirm that all the background processes have finished?

Best Regards,
Tianyu
Simone Trezzi 1 Reputation point

2022-03-14T14:35:40.583+00:00

Hi, all the background tasks are finished in all our cases.

Anyway we did some further tests and we found out that with nodejs version 16.x we see those "extra" packages, with the older 12.6.0 version we don't see them.
Any idea why?

Best regards,
Simone
Tianyu Sun-MSFT 34,436 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2022-03-16T09:25:09.097+00:00

Hi Simone, I suggest you directly submit a new ticket on our Developer Community. Looks like new version of nodejs added some related files/configurations and make VS easy to detect, list and show the packages.

Best Regards,
Tianyu
Simone Trezzi 1 Reputation point

2022-03-16T14:58:06.903+00:00

Ok, thank you again for the help.
Best regards.
Simone

Answer 4

Simone Trezzi 1

Hi!

I found out that the "problem" is that nodejstools (Visual Studio npm package manager) uses the '_requiredBy' tag written in "package.json" files inside the dependencies folders in node_modules.
Newer versions of node.js/npm have deprecated all tags that start with '_' in package.json files, so nodejstools can't correctly render the dependencies tree.
A work around seems to be possible by manually writing that tag in the files.

Best regards,
Simone

OzarkaTexan 0

I looked at the package.json of one of the npm packages listed with not listed in package.json. There is no '_requireBy' yag in its package.config. Here is the package:
User's image

Here is its package.json:

{
  "name": "accepts",
  "description": "Higher-level content negotiation",
  "version": "1.3.8",
  "contributors": [
    "Douglas Christopher Wilson <******@somethingdoug.com>",
    "Jonathan Ong <******@jongleberry.com> (http://jongleberry.com)"
  ],
  "license": "MIT",
  "repository": "jshttp/accepts",
  "dependencies": {
    "mime-types": "~2.1.34",
    "negotiator": "0.6.3"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "deep-equal": "1.0.1",
    "eslint": "7.32.0",
    "eslint-config-standard": "14.1.1",
    "eslint-plugin-import": "2.25.4",
    "eslint-plugin-markdown": "2.2.1",
    "eslint-plugin-node": "11.1.0",
    "eslint-plugin-promise": "4.3.1",
    "eslint-plugin-standard": "4.1.0",
    "mocha": "9.2.0",
    "nyc": "15.1.0"
  },
  "files": [
    "LICENSE",
    "HISTORY.md",
    "index.js"
  ],
  "engines": {
    "node": ">= 0.6"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "lint": "eslint .",
    "test": "mocha --reporter spec --check-leaks --bail test/",
    "test-ci": "nyc --reporter=lcov --reporter=text npm test",
    "test-cov": "nyc --reporter=html --reporter=text npm test"
  },
  "keywords": [
    "content",
    "negotiation",
    "accept",
    "accepts"
  ]
}

This is an old application, 5-6 years old, can open with VS 2019, and was able to compile and create node_modules using

npm install --legacy-peer-deps

your help to understand this will be very appreciated.

Regards,

-Ozarka

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Visual Studio 2022 npm package manager

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