What / Why

It seems #1 made an undocumented behavioral change to how npm ci works. The intent of avoiding issues around symbolic linking by not deleting the directory makes sense. However, the implementation no longer executes a true purge. It removes only the assets around the packages leaving any other content/state in place such as a .cache directory.

When

4.0.7

Where

• n/a

How

Current Behavior

• node_modules is not truly purged. Contents not associated with a package are left in place.

Steps to Reproduce

• Execute npm ci when the node_modules directory contains data not tied to a specific package such as the .cache psuedo-standard convention.

Expected Behavior

• The contents of node_modules should be entirely purged.

Who

• n/a

References

• Introduced by delete contents of node_modules but keep the dir itself #1