I’m trying to follow the suggested practice of including all external dependencies in my git repository, but I’m running into several challenges.
First issue: How can I ensure that nested dependencies get committed too? Most npm packages have node_modules listed in their .gitignore files, so they don’t include their own dependencies. Simply removing their .gitignore files feels dangerous.
Second issue: For packages that need compilation, the advice is to only commit source files and run npm rebuild when deploying. However, npm rebuild doesn’t always do a complete clean build for every module. This creates a problem because if compiled files get committed, my production environment might end up with object files that were built on my development machine instead of being properly rebuilt.
The modules don’t use consistent directory structures for their build outputs, so I can’t just ignore common paths like build/ or out/ directories.
Main question: What’s the best way to guarantee that my production servers use exactly the same module versions that I’m using during development? I need a reliable approach that handles both source-only and compiled dependencies correctly.
Docker’s my go-to for this exact problem. Skip the node_modules versioning headaches - I just create a reproducible build environment that handles source and compiled dependencies consistently. Build your app inside a Docker container with a specific Node.js version, then copy the artifacts to production. No more cross-platform compilation issues since everything builds in the same environment. I use a multi-stage Dockerfile - first stage installs dependencies and compiles native modules, second stage has only runtime stuff. Your dev team can use the same Docker image locally, so you’ll catch compilation problems early. Worried about build times? Docker layer caching makes rebuilds fast when dependencies don’t change. This sidesteps the whole node_modules commit debate while guaranteeing identical dependency versions everywhere. With proper CI/CD, it’s way more reliable than managing package-lock.json differences between dev and production.
totally with you on that! package-lock.json saves u from the mess. just use npm ci on the prod server, and evrything will be aligned. no more node_modules headache!
The old advice about committing node_modules is wrong and causes more headaches than it’s worth. I’ve managed several production apps, and while the package-lock.json approach mentioned earlier is right, there’s more to consider for your compilation issues. For compiled modules, use npm ci instead of npm install in production. It does a clean install from your lock file and properly triggers compilation steps. Just make sure your production environment has the build tools - node-gyp, python, and the relevant compilers. About npm rebuild not being thorough enough - I’ve found that combining npm ci with wiping the node_modules directory before deployment fixes inconsistencies. Fresh compilation on the target environment is actually more reliable than committing compiled stuff from your dev machine. Practical tip: keep separate package-lock.json files for different environments if you hit platform-specific compilation problems. This has solved cross-platform deployment issues in my projects without the mess of version controlling thousands of dependency files.