I'm currently building an application and started by running `npm init -y` in the root directory, which created a package.json and a node_modules folder there. Later on, I ran the same command again to set up a specific package.json for the backend, intending to install Prisma locally. This resulted in another node_modules folder being created. I'm wondering if it's normal to have more than one node_modules in a project, especially considering the space it takes up. Am I doing something wrong? Can someone clarify this for me?
3 Answers
Ideally, you shouldn't mix multiple repositories in the same root folder like that—it can complicate things. Having separate node_modules for different package.json files is generally acceptable, but be cautious.
Yes, it's pretty common based on how you've structured your project. If you're using workspaces, there'll be a node_modules in the root and potentially one for each sub-package too. Just make sure you're clean about dependency management so things don’t get confusing!
It's totally fine to have multiple node_modules folders as long as they are in separate project directories. For example, if you have a structure like this:
root/
|- node_modules
|- package.json
|- project_a/
|- node_modules
|- package.json
That keeps everything organized. If your setup is more nested, like having 'backend' within the root, that's still acceptable. However, if you don’t really need that structure, you might consider restructuring your projects a bit.
Got it! My setup looks like this after running npm init -y:
root/
|- node_modules
|- package.json
|- backend/
|- node_modules
|- package.json
So this structure should be fine?
Thanks for the insight! I was worried about having redundant folders.