npm install if package.json was modified

Question

TL;DR: Is there a way to have npm install run automatically before running any npm script if your package.json has been modified?

Problem

Answer 1

You can create a custom script that will run your smart install.

smart-install.sh file

#!/usr/bin/env bash

changedFiles="$(git diff-tree -r --name-only --no-commit-id ORIG_HEAD HEAD)"

checkForChangedFiles() {
    echo "$changedFiles" | grep --quiet "$1" && eval "$2"
}

packageJsonHasChanged() {
  echo "Changes to package.json detected, installing updates"
  npm i
}

checkForChangedFiles package.json packageJsonHasChanged

Then if you have husky you can add that to the post-checkout hook or any hook you like. If you don't have husky, you can also add it directly to the scripts which essentially do the same thing.

.huskyrc file

{
  "hooks": {
    "post-checkout": "npm run smart-install"
  }
}

package.json file

"scripts": {
  ...
  "smart-install": "bash ./bin/smart-install.sh",
}

Either way it's a good idea to create a npm script to run smart-install