Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

Dependency list in package explorer

Open
#2,380 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
node.js

Research direction

Start by comparing the affected and working Node.js projects in Visual Studio, focusing on npm-node-explorer, package.json, and the dependency metadata under node_modules. Investigate how the missing _requiredBy tag affects the displayed dependency list; done means the explorer shows only packages explicitly listed in package.json.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Hi,
I have the following situation in node.js projects in Visual Studio.

Npm package manager shows all packages regardless of their state (npm-node-explorer shows all the sub-dependencies of all the packages), as shown in the picture
1

The thing I don't understand about this "issue" is the fact that in other projects I don't see those "Installed, but not explicitly listed in package.json" npm packages. Here's an example of a project:
2

I found out that the "problem" is that the "_requiredBy" tag written in package.json files inside the dependencies folders in node_modules is missing.

Is there a way to see only installed and listed in package.json packages?

Best regards.

Dominant language
C#
Stars
1.8k
Forks
355
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from microsoft/nodejstools

All issues in microsoft/nodejstools

Similar issues

More C# issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.