Node Modules & NPM

Node Modules

NPM is the node package manager, which installs packages locally into a project, specifically, into the node_modules folder. ... Using npm for managing dependencies is a great idea, its a fantastic package manager.

Global libraries. You can run npm list -g to see where global libraries are installed. On Unix systems they are normally placed in /usr/local/lib/node or /usr/local/lib/node_modules when installed globally. If you set the NODE_PATH environment variable to this path, the modules can be found by node.

What NPM install will do?

Introduced in npm v5, the purpose of this file is to ensure that the dependencies remain the same on all machines the project is installed on. It is automatically generated for any operations where npm modifies either the node_modules folder, or package.json file. You can go ahead and try this out if you like. 

What is NPM?

npm can manage packages that are local dependencies of a particular project, as well as globally-installed JavaScript tools. When used as a dependency manager for a local project, npm can install, in one command, all the dependencies of a project through the package.json file.