VSCode Package Watch

Package Watch is a Visual Studio Code extension that checks and installs the local node dependencies. It monitors your package.json, package-lock.json or yarn.lock, and installs the missing/outdated node dependencies using yarn or npm automatically.

Basic usage

As soon as Package Watch is installed, the extension offers the following features:

• Running packageWatch.checkDependencies command finds all of your package.json inside the current workspace, and tells if all node dependency is in-sync.
• Running packageWatch.installDependencies command executes either yarn install --check-files or npm install, and finally runs packageWatch.checkDependencies command.
• When a workspace containing package.json is opened, packageWatch.checkDependencies command is triggered automatically.
• When package.json, package-lock.json or yarn.lock gets added/modified, packageWatch.checkDependencies command is triggered automatically.
• The extension supports Yarn Workspace out of the box. It runs yarn install only once for those linked directories.
• The extension checks if a dependency is in-sync by reading the version numbers from package.json, package-lock.json/yarn.lock, and node_modules/*/package.json.
• The extension prefers yarn install, if both package-lock.json and yarn.lock are found.
• The extension prefers yarn install, if neither package-lock.json nor yarn.lock are found and which yarn results in a success.
• After running packageWatch.installDependencies command, if the node dependencies are still not in-sync, the second try will execute either yarn install --check-files --force or npm install --force.