Being able to move the node_modules directory (like it's possible in yarn(JS), and in composer (PHP))

[bakeiro]

For reasons like convenience, design, or special cases (like setting up a shared folder containing the JS dependencies), would be nice to be able to specify the node_modules folder location locally to the project, and not globally.

For example, you can achieve easily this in composer writing "vendor-dir": "./custom_folder_name/vendor/" in composer.json

[ljharb]

That would break any tooling that expects node_modules to be there, including anything that does module resolution (linters, bundlers, etc) - that doesn't feel very convenient to me.

[bakeiro]

yes that makes sense, but NODE_PATH global variable it's able to do this already, but for all packages globally so it's already more less possible but not only local, still, I get your point, since it would be a big breaking change

[ljharb]

NODE_PATH is largely deprecated and highly discouraged, and doesn't exist in the ESM implementation, so I don't think this changes the discussion much.

[bakeiro]

yeah, I guess that makes sense... marked as answered ;) (but not 100% satisfied haha 😄 )