node.js - How to install npm peer dependencies automatically?

Question

For example, when I install Angular2:

npm install --save angular2
[email protected] /Users/doug/Projects/dougludlow/temp
├── [email protected] 
├── UNMET PEER DEPENDENCY es6-promise@^3.0.2
├── UNMET PEER DEPENDENCY es6-shim@^0.33.3
├── UNMET PEER DEPENDENCY [email protected]
├── UNMET PEER DEPENDENCY [email protected]
└── UNMET PEER DEPENDENCY [email protected]

npm WARN [email protected] requires a peer of es6-promise@^3.0.2 but none was installed.
npm WARN [email protected] requires a peer of es6-shim@^0.33.3 but none was installed.
npm WARN [email protected] requires a peer of [email protected] but none was installed.
npm WARN [email protected] requires a peer of [email protected] but none was installed.
npm WARN [email protected] requires a peer of [email protected] but none was installed.

Is there a magic flag that I can pass to npm that will install the peer dependencies as well? I haven't been able to find one... It's tedious to manually copy and paste the peer dependencies and make sure I have the correct versions.

In other words, I'd rather not have to do:

npm install --save [email protected] es6-promise@^3.0.2 es6-shim@^0.33.3 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

What is the better way?

Answer 1

The automatic install of peer dependencies was explicitly removed with npm 3, as it cause more problems than it tried to solve. You can read about it here for example:

• https://blog.npmjs.org/post/110924823920/npm-weekly-5
• https://github.com/npm/npm/releases/tag/v3.0.0

So no, for the reasons given, you cannot install them automatically with npm 3 upwards.

NPM V7

NPM v7 has reintroduced the automatic peerDependencies installation. They had made some changes to fix old problems as version compatibility across multiple dependants. You can see the discussion here and the announcement here

Now in V7, as in versions before V3, you only need to do an npm i and all peerDependences should be automatically installed.