one-step repair of node_modules folder in bad state

[StevenACoffman]

I have globally installed yeoman as well as some other command line utilities, and whether it was due to unreliable internet during install or something else, when I do npm update, I have lots of warnings like:

npm ERR! ENOTEMPTY, rmdir '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/yeoman-generator/node_modules/file-utils/node_modules'

If I do sudo npm -g list, I see lots of unmet dependencies (and a couple invalids).
I can figure out what the root thing is (e.g. yo), do an sudo npm -g remove yo and then sudo npm -g install yo and then things are resolved. However, there are plenty of other global utilities (nodeschool workshoppers, etc.) that still have problems. It would be great if I could just "npm -g update" and it would install unmet dependencies, or maybe "npm -g fixup" or something. Maybe something like that already exists, and it could be added to the wiki troubleshooting page.

[othiym23]

It's most useful if you can include your node and npm versions with these kinds of issues (and maybe an npm-debug.log file for failed installs) so we know which issues have or haven't been fixed in npm since the version you're running. That said:

• npm -g update is currently broken as designed; we intend to fix it in the short- to medium-term.
• making it so that a regular npm install will go through and fix all of the issues with the current project's dependencies is a project that's being tackled by @iarna under the rubric "multi-stage install" (which is the milestone I've tagged this issue onto).
• Once these two issues have been addressed, npm -g update is (I believe) the tool you're looking for, but we also want to add a command analogous to Homebrew's brew doctor that checks the current project (and your npm environment) to ensure they're in a good state.

[StevenACoffman]

Thank you. Is there an already an open issue for the proposed "npm doctor" enhancement?
For reference:

npm -version
2.0.2
node --version
v0.10.32

[othiym23]

Nope, but there is some discussion here and there in the issues. For now, I've retitled this issue to better reflect what you're asking for.

[iarna]

This is going to be implemented under #6913. As such, I'm going to close this ticket and any further discussion should occur over there.