I’m in the process of setting up my laptop at a new job. Today I came across a preference to install dependencies without the npm default semver range, so I wanted to add save-exact to my user configuration. This is a fresh setup on a new laptop — and I had no .npmrc file yet.

# Set config and also create the .npmrc file if it doesn't exist
npm config set save-exact true

# List directory contents to see my new .npmrc file
ls -la

# Verify that the setting works
npm config get save-exact

Cool! That returns true and my user npm config will opt to install dependencies with exact versions. But wait-a-minute, missy… Don’t you have a dotfile repo to version control files like these? I do indeed. It’s been a while since I set it up, so needed to remind myself of how to add a new file.

# Move the file to the repo location
mv .npmrc proj/dotfiles

# Create a symlink from the file’s new repo location back to home
ln -s ~/proj/dotfiles/.npmrc ~/.npmrc

# List directory contents to check out my new symlink
ls -la

Yeah! This now looks different from the previous ls I ran on the home directory.
Now I can see .npmrc -> pointing to the repo where it actually is located now.

But does the setting still work after I moved the file away from home?

# Verify the setting works after moving and symlinking
npm config get save-exact

Returns true. Yay! And now I can commit the .npmrc file in my repo and have version control of it along with other dotfiles. 🎉