wipe modules

A little agent that removes the node_modules folder of non-active projects

A little agent that removes the node_modules folder of non-active projects

Why

If you’re a Javascript developer, you know the node_modules directory holds thousands or even millions of files, resulting in taking a lot of space in your hard disk.

Enter wipe-modules, a little agent that wipes (eats, literally) that big node_modules directory of non-active projects.

Why in Earth would you want to have those monster-sized node_modules folders on inactive projects? You got your package.json to recreate it whenever you want, right?

Usage

$ wipe-modules --help

  Usage: wipe-modules [path] [days]

  Path:
    The full path of your code directory

  Days:
    The days you want to set to mark projects as inactive

  Example: wipe-modules ~/code 30

  That will remove the node_modules of your ~/code projects
  whose been inactive for 30 days or more.

Using cron

wipe-modules can be executed as a background job using using cron

The default included cron-file file holds the following syntax:

0 11 * * * $HOME/bin/wipe-modules ~/code_dir 30

That is the crontab (cron table) file, it instructs cron to run the wipe-modules ~/code_dir 30 script everyday at 11:00 am.

Edit the cron-file to match your own needs, see how to set up a crontab for more info.

Now set the cron-file crontab file in cron using:

$ crontab ~/path_to_cronfile/cron-file

And you’re done!

To check if you’ve successfully added your crontab type:

$ crontab -l

It should display your crontab.

To edit a crontab, use crontab -e and to delete all crontabs use crontab -r.

Note that crontab -r will destroy all your crontabs, that’s why it’s a good idea to keep your crontab commands in a cron-file.

Cron is only supported in unix operating systems.

License

MIT © Enrique Benitez

Published: May 03 2017

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