Why does npm install a bunch of .cmd files on my project root folder?

Question

Why does npm install a bunch of files and .cmd files on my root folder? If I remove the files and run npm install again, those .cmd files will reappear. Why doesn't npm download those files and stored it into node_modules folder?

When I clone the repo in another computer, it doesn't create those .cmd files. Both computer are running windows 10.

After several testing, I found out that if I delete package-lock.json file first then only perform npm install, then those .cmd won't appear, but then now the project fails to start.

Having the same issue on a project and we're basically diff'ing the before and after npm install to see what files were dumped, then removing them. — Ryan Rife, Dec 04 '18 at 20:48

score 7 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 02 '21 at 05:24

7

This happened to me - the fix on Windows was to go to c:\Users\{username}\.npmrc and remove the prefix.

edited Sep 02 '21 at 05:24

Ε Г И І И О

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answered Dec 14 '18 at 17:51

Sean Chase

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What kind of prefix you remove from there? – Efthymios Kalyviotis Apr 24 '19 at 19:23
@EfthymiosKalyviotis open the .npmrc file and there would be a line saying Prefix={your_folder_path}. Just leave that line like Prefix= and you should be good. – Ε Г И І И О Sep 02 '21 at 05:23
I removed the Prefix line completely because it was set to Prefix= and files were being dumping. Once I deleted the line from the file it no longer outputted all the files! – Joseph Moore Nov 26 '21 at 10:45

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 02 '18 at 08:45

If this is only reproducible when using prefix then it is very possible that it is a bug in npm (there is a similar issue in pnpm that I was going to fix).

There is no workaround to this at the moment. There are no configs to set the bin location. So you should avoid using the prefix config until npm fixes the issue.

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered May 10 '19 at 23:11

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The problem is solved when I run npm install directly in the folder instead of using npm install --prefix.

^{This was extracted from the question post and moved here on the author's behalf.}

answered May 10 '19 at 23:11

gunr2171

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 18 '21 at 11:07

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I solved the problem by resetting node js config

Here is doc how to do it

answered Oct 18 '21 at 11:07

Marian Serafimov

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Why does npm install a bunch of .cmd files on my project root folder?

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