Package Manager Detect

This package includes a bin which can be used to detect the current node package manager a node project uses and it's associated commands.

Usage

No need to install, can be run via node exec commands such as:

npx pm-detect

The above command will log the following JSON blob to stdout (if the project uses NPM):

{
  "name": "npm",
  "install": "npm install",
  "frozen-install": "npm ci",
  "global-install": "npm install -g",
  "run": "npm run",
  "exec": "npx"
}

The structure of the output is always the same regardless of package manager (NPM, yarn, PNPM, bun). It is only the values of the object that change.

Command Line Options

The pm-detect CLI supports the following options:

--working-dir <path>

Specifies the working directory to detect the package manager in. If not provided, the current working directory is used.

npx pm-detect --working-dir /path/to/project

Note

If no package manager is detected in the working directory the cli will traverse up the directory tree until it finds one. This should prove useful in monorepos where a workspace might be passed as the current working directory.

--strategies <strategies>

Specifies a comma-separated list of detection strategies to use. The default order is packageJson,installState,lockFile,userAgent — the file-based strategies (packageJson, installState, lockFile) run in the order given against each directory while walking up from the working directory, and the first match wins. userAgent is a post-walk fallback: it only runs if no file-based strategy matched in any directory, regardless of where it appears in the list. Available strategies:

• packageJson - Detect from package.json's packageManager field (most authoritative; recommended)
• installState - Detect from metadata each manager writes during install: node_modules/.modules.yaml (pnpm, with version), node_modules/.yarn-state.yml or .pnp.cjs (yarn berry; version recovered from .yarn/releases/yarn-*.cjs), node_modules/.yarn-integrity (yarn classic), node_modules/.package-lock.json (npm)
• lockFile - Detect from lock file presence (bun.lock, bun.lockb, package-lock.json, yarn.lock, pnpm-lock.yaml)
• userAgent - Detect from the npm_config_user_agent environment variable (post-walk fallback only)

installState is preferred over lockFile by default because it reflects what is actually installed, which is more authoritative than a lockfile that may lag behind a manager switch.

# Use only package.json detection
npx pm-detect --strategies packageJson

# Use multiple strategies in a specific order
npx pm-detect --strategies packageJson,installState,lockFile,userAgent

--help

Shows the help message with all available options.

npx pm-detect --help

--version

Shows the current version of the CLI tool.

npx pm-detect --version

Examples

# Basic usage - detects package manager in current directory
npx pm-detect

# Detect in a specific directory
npx pm-detect --working-dir /path/to/project

# Use only lock file detection strategy
npx pm-detect --strategies lockFile

# Combine options
npx pm-detect --working-dir /path/to/project --strategies packageJson,lockFile

Thanks

This project is based heavily on the following npm packages. Many thanks to their authors.

• package-manager-detector
• detect-package-manager

Contributors ✨

Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):

Jack Westbrook 📖 🚇 ⚠️ 💻

Tom 📖 ⚠️ 💻

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!

Security

This package is published using NPMs provenence feature that asserts a given release is tied to a specific commit.