How do I force Yarn to reinstall a package?

Kevin picture Kevin · Jan 26, 2017 · Viewed 66.1k times · Source

My project has a dependency that I sometimes get from a package server and sometimes get from a local copy I have on my machine. As a result, I frequently need to have Yarn switch where it looks for the dependency. Furthermore, I often change the local copy of the dependency and need to see that change reflected in my main project. As a result, I need a way to tell Yarn to continue looking at the same location for the dependency, but to reinstall the dependency, skipping the cache and grabbing it directly from its current source, even when the version number hasn't changed. (Sometimes I want try small changes to the dependency, and updating the version number every time would quickly become annoying.)

How do I do so?

I've tried the following, but none of them work:

yarn remove dependency
yarn add file:/dependency

Continues to use the previous version of the dependency.

yarn remove dependency
yarn cache clear
yarn add file:/dependency
yarn install --force

Also continues to use the previous version of the dependency.

yarn remove dependency
rm -rf node_modules/
yarn cache clear
yarn add file:/dependency
yarn install --force

Still continues to use the previous version of the dependency.

How can I ensure that Yarn is using the latest version of my dependency?

Answer

Karl Adler picture Karl Adler · Oct 5, 2017

Reinstalling a package after just deleting the node module works with:

yarn install --check-files