Does your Javascript app throw an NPM ELIFECYCLE error (that is anything starting with npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE line) when installing npm packages (via npm install command) or running any other NPM script (e.g. npm run build, npm start)? Then, we got the solution for all such problems.
TL;DR
Solution for all npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE errors 🙏
$ cd <project_directory>
$ npm cache clean --force
$ rm -rf node_modules package-lock.json
$ npm install
Demystifying the error
If you would like to dig into this error message and learn more regarding the real root causes behind it, please read on.
About NPM ELIFECYCLE error
NPM ELIFECYCLE error is a random error which happens due to strange reasons such as corrupted dependencies inside the node_modules folder.
Most of the times, you will never know when this error can happen and finding the exact corrupted area in your dependencies and the potential root causes are also not straightforward.
Therefore, even the experienced developers recommend to completely remove the corrupted dependencies at once and reinstall them fresh as the most convenient solution - instead of wasting time on finding the corrupted dependencies.
Sample error message:
Found 42 errors.
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! errno 2
npm ERR! my-lib@1.0.0 build: `tsc`
npm ERR! Exit status 2
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Failed at the my-lib@1.0.0 build script.
npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.
npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR! /home/ashen/.npm/_logs/2022-05-08T03_26_21_680Z-debug.log
Steps to fix the NPM ELIFECYCLE error
As mentioned above, we have to remove the corrupted dependencies from your NPM project now. For this, you have to clean up the saved NPM dependencies from both your NPM project as well as the NPM cache.
Step 1 - Clean up the NPM cache
When we install a dependencies using npm, those package fiels and some data will be saved as .tar files in the npm cache directory (which is configured automatically when installing NPM for the first time - by default, it would be ~/.npm/_cacache/ location) and such data will be reused later when running npm install commands locally.
Thanks to this NPM caching mechanism, instead of downloading the same package from the internet, npm can extract those .tar files from the cache directory to our working NPM project directory and reuse them meaningfully - reducing overall number of downloads and internet consumption over the network.
However, NPM does not remove this cache automatically, so over time, it can grow upto a considerable size and some parts of this cache can get corrupted too.
Therefore, we have to get rid of this cache with the below command.
npm cache clean --force
Step 2 - Clean up NPM dependencies from your NPM project
As you all know, when we install NPM dependecies to a project, those files get saved into the node_modules directory inside your NPM project. Also, the information regarding the exact those installed dependencies (such as exact version) will be recorded in the package-lock.json file.
We have to get rid of them by completely deleting them.
cd <project_directory>
rm -rf node_modules package-lock.json
After running above command, if we had any corrupted dependecies saved inside our NPM project, they all will be gone.
Step 3 - Install dependecies and retry the failed command
Now both your NPM cache and the NPM project are completely free from any corrupted dependecies from the past. You can fresh-install all dependecies and retry the previously-failed command on the newly installed dependencies.
npm install
npm <any_command>
By now, this error must be gone and your NPM commands must start to work as expected.
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