dnode: Search and Delete Node Modules Folders Recursively

August 17, 2021 (Modified on May 4, 2023) • Golang CLI Utility • 2 minutes to read • Edit

Source: github.com/akshaybabloo/dnode

Node’s package managers makes it easy to develop applications, but the bloat it brings with it is (that’s node_modules) painful. My 2013 Mac with 256 GB HDD cannot handle it. I currently have around eight projects that use yarn package manager and the total size of all node_modules comes to around ~2.2GB. And lets not even get to the cache folder (Tip: yarn cache clean). All the hate for node_modules is totally justified.

All I want to do is to delete all unused node_modules folders (we all think that we will get back to it at some point but we never do), and there are different ways to do it:

1. Go to each project and delete the node_modules folder
2. Use one of the following shell scripts:
   1. Windows:

   FOR /d /r . %d in (node_modules) DO @IF EXIST "%d" rm -rf "%d"
   

   2. Linux:

   find . -name 'node_modules' -type d -prune -print -exec rm -rf '{}' \;
   

   3. PowerShell:

   Get-ChildItem -Path "." -Include "node_modules" -Recurse -Directory | Remove-Item -Recurse -Force
   

3. Or use dnode:

   dnode delete
   

Instillation

There are pre-built binaries for Windows, macOS and Linux, these can be found at the release page.

Or you could build one yourself:

Note: The code depends on Go 1.17 or above

git clone https://github.com/akshaybabloo/dnode.git
cd dnode
go build -o dnode
./dnode --help

Usage

There are two commands - list and delete.

List

dnode list lists all the unused node_modules folders in the current directory tree.

Example:

Delete

dnode delete deletes all the unused node_modules folders in the current directory tree.

Example:

Final Thoughts

Again, this CLI was developed out of frustration to get rid of unused node_modules folders. I hope you find it useful.

Happy coding 🍾