The package-lock.json file: to be or not to be?

Question

npm

The purpose of this file is very clear - to fix the versions of packages used so that an exact copy of node_modules can be deployed.
And I, as expected, save this file in a turnip, along with the source code.
But this is not the first time I step on a rake.
Opened an old project today. It is not very old, three months have passed since the last edit, and I ruled on my wheelbarrow. I clone, that means, the code from the turnip, I run npm install, everything starts up, downloads, builds, rebuilds sass, as a result, everything goes in normal mode, without errors.
I start the dev server npm start, I get an error and a crash from the task (alas, I don’t remember which one). Just in case, I erase node_modules, repeat everything and again the error.
OK. I delete node_modules, delete package-lock.json, install it, run it - everything works.
Does anyone know the reason for this behaviour?
Do you keep the lock file in the turnip yourself?

Answer 1

Does anyone know the reason for this behaviour?

I encountered the same problem and got the impression (possibly erroneous) that npm silently caches the lock files themselves and then, if it sees the presence of such a file in the old location, it uses its cached version to install dependencies, and already during the scripts run " discovers" that the versions of everything don't match and crashes with weird errors that don't google at all. Such errors did not occur on a virgin-fresh laptop and appeared on it after some time. And then I hard-cleaned the entire npm cache with my hands and everything worked fine again. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's very suspicious...