config

More than you probably want to know about npm configuration

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Table of contents

Description

npm gets its configuration values from the following sources, sorted by priority:

Putting --foo bar on the command line sets the foo configuration parameter to "bar". A -- argument tells the cli parser to stop reading flags. Using --flag without specifying any value will set the value to true.

Example: --flag1 --flag2 will set both configuration parameters to true, while --flag1 --flag2 bar will set flag1 to true, and flag2 to bar. Finally, --flag1 --flag2 -- bar will set both configuration parameters to true, and the bar is taken as a command argument.

Environment Variables

Any environment variables that start with npm_config_ will be interpreted as a configuration parameter. For example, putting npm_config_foo=bar in your environment will set the foo configuration parameter to bar. Any environment configurations that are not given a value will be given the value of true. Config values are case-insensitive, so NPM_CONFIG_FOO=bar will work the same. However, please note that inside scripts npm will set its own environment variables and Node will prefer those lowercase versions over any uppercase ones that you might set. For details see this issue.

Notice that you need to use underscores instead of dashes, so --allow-same-version would become npm_config_allow_same_version=true.

npmrc Files

The four relevant files are:

per-project configuration file (/path/to/my/project/.npmrc)
per-user configuration file (defaults to $HOME/.npmrc; configurable via CLI option --userconfig or environment variable $NPM_CONFIG_USERCONFIG)
global configuration file (defaults to $PREFIX/etc/npmrc; configurable via CLI option --globalconfig or environment variable $NPM_CONFIG_GLOBALCONFIG)
npm's built-in configuration file (/path/to/npm/npmrc)

See npmrc for more details.

Default Configs

Run npm config ls -l to see a set of configuration parameters that are internal to npm, and are defaults if nothing else is specified.

Shorthands and Other CLI Niceties

The following shorthands are parsed on the command-line:

-v: --version
-h, -?, --help, -H: --usage
-s, --silent: --loglevel silent
-q, --quiet: --loglevel warn
-d: --loglevel info
-dd, --verbose: --loglevel verbose
-ddd: --loglevel silly
-g: --global
-C: --prefix
-l: --long
-m: --message
-p, --porcelain: --parseable
-reg: --registry
-f: --force
-desc: --description
-S: --save
-P: --save-prod
-D: --save-dev
-O: --save-optional
-B: --save-bundle
-E: --save-exact
-y: --yes
-n: --yes false
ll and la commands: ls --long

If the specified configuration param resolves unambiguously to a known configuration parameter, then it is expanded to that configuration parameter. For example:

npm ls --par
# same as:
npm ls --parseable

If multiple single-character shorthands are strung together, and the resulting combination is unambiguously not some other configuration param, then it is expanded to its various component pieces. For example:

npm ls -gpld
# same as:
npm ls --global --parseable --long --loglevel info

Per-Package Config Settings

When running scripts (see scripts) the package.json "config" keys are overwritten in the environment if there is a config param of <name>[@<version>]:<key>. For example, if the package.json has this:

{
  "name": "foo",
  "config": { "port": "8080" },
  "scripts": { "start": "node server.js" }
}

and the server.js is this:

http.createServer(...).listen(process.env.npm_package_config_port)

then the user could change the behavior by doing:

npm config set foo:port 80

See package.json for more information.

Config Settings

access

Default: restricted
Type: Access

When publishing scoped packages, the access level defaults to restricted. If you want your scoped package to be publicly viewable (and installable) set --access=public. The only valid values for access are public and restricted. Unscoped packages always have an access level of public.

allow-same-version

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Prevents throwing an error when npm version is used to set the new version to the same value as the current version.

always-auth

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Force npm to always require authentication when accessing the registry, even for GET requests.

also

Default: null
Type: String

When "dev" or "development" and running local npm shrinkwrap, npm outdated, or npm update, is an alias for --dev.

audit

Default: true
Type: Boolean

When "true" submit audit reports alongside npm install runs to the default registry and all registries configured for scopes. See the documentation for npm audit for details on what is submitted.

audit-level

Default: "low"
Type: 'low', 'moderate', 'high', 'critical'

The minimum level of vulnerability for npm audit to exit with a non-zero exit code.

auth-type

Default: 'legacy'
Type: 'legacy', 'sso', 'saml', 'oauth'

What authentication strategy to use with adduser/login.

before

Alias: enjoy-by
Default: null
Type: Date

If passed to npm install, will rebuild the npm tree such that only versions that were available on or before the --before time get installed. If there's no versions available for the current set of direct dependencies, the command will error.

If the requested version is a dist-tag and the given tag does not pass the --before filter, the most recent version less than or equal to that tag will be used. For example, foo@latest might install foo@1.2 even though latest is 2.0.

bin-links

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Tells npm to create symlinks (or .cmd shims on Windows) for package executables.

Set to false to have it not do this. This can be used to work around the fact that some file systems don't support symlinks, even on ostensibly Unix systems.

browser

Default: OS X: "open", Windows: "start", Others: "xdg-open"
Type: String

The browser that is called by the npm docs command to open websites.

ca

Default: The npm CA certificate
Type: String, Array or null

The Certificate Authority signing certificate that is trusted for SSL connections to the registry. Values should be in PEM format (Windows calls it "Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER)") with newlines replaced by the string "\n". For example:

ca="-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\nXXXX\nXXXX\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----"

Set to null to only allow "known" registrars, or to a specific CA cert to trust only that specific signing authority.

Multiple CAs can be trusted by specifying an array of certificates:

ca[]="..."
ca[]="..."

cafile

Default: null
Type: path

A path to a file containing one or multiple Certificate Authority signing certificates. Similar to the ca setting, but allows for multiple CA's, as well as for the CA information to be stored in a file on disk.

cache

Default: Windows: %AppData%\npm-cache, Posix: ~/.npm
Type: path

The location of npm's cache directory. See npm cache

cache-lock-stale

Default: 60000 (1 minute)
Type: Number

The number of ms before cache folder lockfiles are considered stale.

cache-lock-retries

Default: 10
Type: Number

Number of times to retry to acquire a lock on cache folder lockfiles.

cache-lock-wait

Default: 10000 (10 seconds)
Type: Number

Number of ms to wait for cache lock files to expire.

cache-max

Default: Infinity
Type: Number

DEPRECATED: This option has been deprecated in favor of --prefer-online.

--cache-max=0 is an alias for --prefer-online.

cache-min

Default: 10
Type: Number

DEPRECATED: This option has been deprecated in favor of --prefer-offline.

--cache-min=9999 (or bigger) is an alias for --prefer-offline.

cert

Default: null
Type: String

A client certificate to pass when accessing the registry. Values should be in PEM format (Windows calls it "Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER)") with newlines replaced by the string "\n". For example:

cert="-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\nXXXX\nXXXX\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----"

It is not the path to a certificate file (and there is no "certfile" option).

cidr

Default: null
Type: String, Array, null

This is a list of CIDR address to be used when configuring limited access tokens with the npm token create command.

color

Default: true
Type: Boolean or "always"

If false, never shows colors. If "always" then always shows colors. If true, then only prints color codes for tty file descriptors.

This option can also be changed using the environment: colors are disabled when the environment variable NO_COLOR is set to any value.

depth

Default: Infinity
Type: Number

The depth to go when recursing directories for npm ls, npm cache ls, and npm outdated.

For npm outdated, a setting of Infinity will be treated as 0 since that gives more useful information. To show the outdated status of all packages and dependents, use a large integer value, e.g., npm outdated --depth 9999

description

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Show the description in npm search

dev

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Install dev-dependencies along with packages.

dry-run

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Indicates that you don't want npm to make any changes and that it should only report what it would have done. This can be passed into any of the commands that modify your local installation, eg, install, update, dedupe, uninstall. This is NOT currently honored by some network related commands, eg dist-tags, owner, etc.

editor

Default: EDITOR environment variable if set, or "vi" on Posix, or "notepad" on Windows.
Type: path

The command to run for npm edit or npm config edit.

engine-strict

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If set to true, then npm will stubbornly refuse to install (or even consider installing) any package that claims to not be compatible with the current Node.js version.

force

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Makes various commands more forceful.

lifecycle script failure does not block progress.
publishing clobbers previously published versions.
skips cache when requesting from the registry.
prevents checks against clobbering non-npm files.

format-package-lock

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Format package-lock.json or npm-shrinkwrap.json as a human readable file.

fetch-retries

Default: 2
Type: Number

The "retries" config for the retry module to use when fetching packages from the registry.

fetch-retry-factor

Default: 10
Type: Number

The "factor" config for the retry module to use when fetching packages.

fetch-retry-mintimeout

Default: 10000 (10 seconds)
Type: Number

The "minTimeout" config for the retry module to use when fetching packages.

fetch-retry-maxtimeout

Default: 60000 (1 minute)
Type: Number

The "maxTimeout" config for the retry module to use when fetching packages.

fund

Default: true
Type: Boolean

When "true" displays the message at the end of each npm install acknowledging the number of dependencies looking for funding. See npm fund for details.

git

Default: "git"
Type: String

The command to use for git commands. If git is installed on the computer, but is not in the PATH, then set this to the full path to the git binary.

git-tag-version

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Tag the commit when using the npm version command.

commit-hooks

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Run git commit hooks when using the npm version command.

global

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Operates in "global" mode, so that packages are installed into the prefix folder instead of the current working directory. See folders for more on the differences in behavior.

packages are installed into the {prefix}/lib/node_modules folder, instead of the current working directory.
bin files are linked to {prefix}/bin
man pages are linked to {prefix}/share/man

globalconfig

Default: {prefix}/etc/npmrc
Type: path

The config file to read for global config options.

global-style

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Causes npm to install the package into your local node_modules folder with the same layout it uses with the global node_modules folder. Only your direct dependencies will show in node_modules and everything they depend on will be flattened in their node_modules folders. This obviously will eliminate some deduping. If used with legacy-bundling, legacy-bundling will be preferred.

group

Default: GID of the current process
Type: String or Number

The group to use when running package scripts in global mode as the root user.

heading

Default: "npm"
Type: String

The string that starts all the debugging log output.

https-proxy

Default: null
Type: url

A proxy to use for outgoing https requests. If the HTTPS_PROXY or https_proxy or HTTP_PROXY or http_proxy environment variables are set, proxy settings will be honored by the underlying request library.

if-present

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If true, npm will not exit with an error code when run-script is invoked for a script that isn't defined in the scripts section of package.json. This option can be used when it's desirable to optionally run a script when it's present and fail if the script fails. This is useful, for example, when running scripts that may only apply for some builds in an otherwise generic CI setup.

ignore-prepublish

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If true, npm will not run prepublish scripts.

ignore-scripts

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If true, npm does not run scripts specified in package.json files.

init-module

Default: ~/.npm-init.js
Type: path

A module that will be loaded by the npm init command. See the documentation for the init-package-json module for more information, or npm init.

init-author-name

Default: ""
Type: String

The value npm init should use by default for the package author's name.

init-author-email

Default: ""
Type: String

The value npm init should use by default for the package author's email.

init-author-url

Default: ""
Type: String

The value npm init should use by default for the package author's homepage.

init-license

Default: "ISC"
Type: String

The value npm init should use by default for the package license.

init-version

Default: "1.0.0"
Type: semver

The value that npm init should use by default for the package version number, if not already set in package.json.

json

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Whether or not to output JSON data, rather than the normal output.

This feature is currently experimental, and the output data structures for many commands is either not implemented in JSON yet, or subject to change. Only the output from npm ls --json and npm search --json are currently valid.

key

Default: null
Type: String

A client key to pass when accessing the registry. Values should be in PEM format with newlines replaced by the string "\n". For example:

key="-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\nXXXX\nXXXX\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----"

It is not the path to a key file (and there is no "keyfile" option).

legacy-bundling

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Causes npm to install the package such that versions of npm prior to 1.4, such as the one included with node 0.8, can install the package. This eliminates all automatic deduping. If used with global-style this option will be preferred.

link

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If true, then local installs will link if there is a suitable globally installed package.

Note that this means that local installs can cause things to be installed into the global space at the same time. The link is only done if one of the two conditions are met:

The package is not already installed globally, or
the globally installed version is identical to the version that is being installed locally.

local-address

Default: undefined
Type: IP Address

The IP address of the local interface to use when making connections to the npm registry. Must be IPv4 in versions of Node prior to 0.12.

loglevel

Default: "notice"
Type: String
Values: "silent", "error", "warn", "notice", "http", "timing", "info", "verbose", "silly"

What level of logs to report. On failure, all logs are written to npm-debug.log in the current working directory.

Any logs of a higher level than the setting are shown. The default is "notice".

logstream

Default: process.stderr
Type: Stream

This is the stream that is passed to the npmlog module at run time.

It cannot be set from the command line, but if you are using npm programmatically, you may wish to send logs to somewhere other than stderr.

If the color config is set to true, then this stream will receive colored output if it is a TTY.

logs-max

Default: 10
Type: Number

The maximum number of log files to store.

long

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Show extended information in npm ls and npm search.

maxsockets

Default: 50
Type: Number

The maximum number of connections to use per origin (protocol/host/port combination). Passed to the http Agent used to make the request.

message

Default: "%s"
Type: String

Commit message which is used by npm version when creating version commit.

Any "%s" in the message will be replaced with the version number.

metrics-registry

Default: The value of registry (which defaults to "https://registry.npmjs.org/")
Type: String

The registry you want to send cli metrics to if send-metrics is true.

node-options

Default: null
Type: String

Options to pass through to Node.js via the NODE_OPTIONS environment variable. This does not impact how npm itself is executed but it does impact how lifecycle scripts are called.

node-version

Default: process.version
Type: semver or false

The node version to use when checking a package's engines map.

noproxy

Default: null
Type: String or Array

A comma-separated string or an array of domain extensions that a proxy should not be used for.

offline

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Force offline mode: no network requests will be done during install. To allow the CLI to fill in missing cache data, see --prefer-offline.

onload-script

Default: false
Type: path

A node module to require() when npm loads. Useful for programmatic usage.

only

Default: null
Type: String

When "dev" or "development" and running local npm install without any arguments, only devDependencies (and their dependencies) are installed.

When "dev" or "development" and running local npm ls, npm outdated, or npm update, is an alias for --dev.

When "prod" or "production" and running local npm install without any arguments, only non-devDependencies (and their dependencies) are installed.

When "prod" or "production" and running local npm ls, npm outdated, or npm update, is an alias for --production.

optional

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Attempt to install packages in the optionalDependencies object. Note that if these packages fail to install, the overall installation process is not aborted.

otp

Default: null
Type: Number

This is a one-time password from a two-factor authenticator. It's needed when publishing or changing package permissions with npm access.

package-lock

Default: true
Type: Boolean

If set to false, then ignore package-lock.json files when installing. This will also prevent writing package-lock.json if save is true.

When package package-locks are disabled, automatic pruning of extraneous modules will also be disabled. To remove extraneous modules with package-locks disabled use npm prune.

This option is an alias for --shrinkwrap.

package-lock-only

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If set to true, it will update only the package-lock.json, instead of checking node_modules and downloading dependencies.

parseable

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Output parseable results from commands that write to standard output. For npm search, this will be tab-separated table format.

prefer-offline

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If true, staleness checks for cached data will be bypassed, but missing data will be requested from the server. To force full offline mode, use --offline.

This option is effectively equivalent to --cache-min=9999999.

prefer-online

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If true, staleness checks for cached data will be forced, making the CLI look for updates immediately even for fresh package data.

prefix

Default: see folders
Type: path

The location to install global items. If set on the command line, then it forces non-global commands to run in the specified folder.

preid

Default: ""
Type: String

The "prerelease identifier" to use as a prefix for the "prerelease" part of a semver. Like the rc in 1.2.0-rc.8.

production

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Set to true to run in "production" mode.

devDependencies are not installed at the topmost level when running local npm install without any arguments.
Set the NODE_ENV="production" for lifecycle scripts.

progress

Default: true, unless TRAVIS or CI env vars set.
Type: Boolean

When set to true, npm will display a progress bar during time intensive operations, if process.stderr is a TTY.

Set to false to suppress the progress bar.

proxy

Default: null
Type: url

A proxy to use for outgoing http requests. If the HTTP_PROXY or http_proxy environment variables are set, proxy settings will be honored by the underlying request library.

read-only

Default: false
Type: Boolean

This is used to mark a token as unable to publish when configuring limited access tokens with the npm token create command.

rebuild-bundle

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Rebuild bundled dependencies after installation.

registry

Default: https://registry.npmjs.org/
Type: url

The base URL of the npm package registry.

rollback

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Remove failed installs.

save

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Save installed packages to a package.json file as dependencies.

When used with the npm rm command, it removes it from the dependencies object.

Only works if there is already a package.json file present.

save-bundle

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If a package would be saved at install time by the use of --save, --save-dev, or --save-optional, then also put it in the bundleDependencies list.

When used with the npm rm command, it removes it from the bundledDependencies list.

save-prod

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Makes sure that a package will be saved into dependencies specifically. This is useful if a package already exists in devDependencies or optionalDependencies, but you want to move it to be a production dep. This is also the default behavior if --save is true, and neither --save-dev or --save-optional are true.

save-dev

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Save installed packages to a package.json file as devDependencies.

When used with the npm rm command, it removes it from the devDependencies object.

Only works if there is already a package.json file present.

save-exact

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Dependencies saved to package.json using --save, --save-dev or --save-optional will be configured with an exact version rather than using npm's default semver range operator.

save-optional

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Save installed packages to a package.json file as optionalDependencies.

When used with the npm rm command, it removes it from the devDependencies object.

Only works if there is already a package.json file present.

save-prefix

Default: '^'
Type: String

Configure how versions of packages installed to a package.json file via --save or --save-dev get prefixed.

For example if a package has version 1.2.3, by default its version is set to ^1.2.3 which allows minor upgrades for that package, but after npm config set save-prefix='~' it would be set to ~1.2.3 which only allows patch upgrades.

scope

Default: the scope of the current project, if any, or ""
Type: String

Associate an operation with a scope for a scoped registry. Useful when logging in to a private registry for the first time: npm login --scope=@organization --registry=registry.organization.com, which will cause @organization to be mapped to the registry for future installation of packages specified according to the pattern @organization/package.

script-shell

Default: null
Type: path

The shell to use for scripts run with the npm run command.

scripts-prepend-node-path

Default: "warn-only"
Type: Boolean, "auto" or "warn-only"

If set to true, add the directory in which the current node executable resides to the PATH environment variable when running scripts, even if that means that npm will invoke a different node executable than the one which it is running.

If set to false, never modify PATH with that.

If set to "warn-only", never modify PATH but print a warning if npm thinks that you may want to run it with true, e.g. because the node executable in the PATH is not the one npm was invoked with.

If set to auto, only add that directory to the PATH environment variable if the node executable with which npm was invoked and the one that is found first on the PATH are different.

searchexclude

Default: ""
Type: String

Space-separated options that limit the results from search.

searchopts

Default: ""
Type: String

Space-separated options that are always passed to search.

searchlimit

Default: 20
Type: Number

Number of items to limit search results to. Will not apply at all to legacy searches.

searchstaleness

Default: 900 (15 minutes)
Type: Number

The age of the cache, in seconds, before another registry request is made if using legacy search endpoint.

send-metrics

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If true, success/failure metrics will be reported to the registry stored in metrics-registry. These requests contain the number of successful and failing runs of the npm CLI and the time period overwhich those counts were gathered. No identifying information is included in these requests.

shell

Default: SHELL environment variable, or "bash" on Posix, or "cmd" on Windows
Type: path

The shell to run for the npm explore command.

shrinkwrap

Default: true
Type: Boolean

If set to false, then ignore npm-shrinkwrap.json files when installing. This will also prevent writing npm-shrinkwrap.json if save is true.

This option is an alias for --package-lock.

sign-git-commit

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If set to true, then the npm version command will commit the new package version using -S to add a signature.

Note that git requires you to have set up GPG keys in your git configs for this to work properly.

sign-git-tag

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If set to true, then the npm version command will tag the version using -s to add a signature.

Note that git requires you to have set up GPG keys in your git configs for this to work properly.

sso-poll-frequency

Default: 500
Type: Number

When used with SSO-enabled auth-types, configures how regularly the registry should be polled while the user is completing authentication.

sso-type

Default: 'oauth'
Type: 'oauth', 'saml', or null

If --auth-type=sso, the type of SSO type to use.

strict-ssl

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Whether or not to do SSL key validation when making requests to the registry via https.

tag-version-prefix

Default: "v"
Type: String

If set, alters the prefix used when tagging a new version when performing a version increment using npm-version. To remove the prefix altogether, set it to the empty string: "".

Because other tools may rely on the convention that npm version tags look like v1.0.0, only use this property if it is absolutely necessary. In particular, use care when overriding this setting for public packages.

timing

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If true, writes an npm-debug log to _logs and timing information to _timing.json, both in your cache. _timing.json is a newline delimited list of JSON objects. You can quickly view it with this json command line: json -g < ~/.npm/_timing.json.

tmp

Default: TMPDIR environment variable, or "/tmp"
Type: path

Where to store temporary files and folders. All temp files are deleted on success, but left behind on failure for forensic purposes.

unicode

Default: false on windows, true on mac/unix systems with a unicode locale
Type: Boolean

When set to true, npm uses unicode characters in the tree output. When false, it uses ascii characters to draw trees.

unsafe-perm

Default: false if running as root, true otherwise
Type: Boolean

Set to true to suppress the UID/GID switching when running package scripts. If set explicitly to false, then installing as a non-root user will fail.

update-notifier

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Set to false to suppress the update notification when using an older version of npm than the latest.

usage

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Set to show short usage output (like the -H output) instead of complete help when doing npm help.

user

Default: "nobody"
Type: String or Number

The UID to set to when running package scripts as root.

userconfig

Default: ~/.npmrc
Type: path

The location of user-level configuration settings.

umask

Default: 022
Type: Octal numeric string in range 0000..0777 (0..511)

The "umask" value to use when setting the file creation mode on files and folders.

Folders and executables are given a mode which is 0777 masked against this value. Other files are given a mode which is 0666 masked against this value. Thus, the defaults are 0755 and 0644 respectively.

user-agent

Default: node/{process.version} {process.platform} {process.arch}
Type: String

Sets a User-Agent to the request header

version

Default: false
Type: boolean

If true, output the npm version and exit successfully.

Only relevant when specified explicitly on the command line.

versions

Default: false
Type: boolean

If true, output the npm version as well as node's process.versions map, and exit successfully.

Only relevant when specified explicitly on the command line.

viewer

Default: "man" on Posix, "browser" on Windows
Type: path

The program to use to view help content.

Set to "browser" to view html help content in the default web browser.