Is There a Way to Force Npm to Generate Package-Lock. Json?

By default, package-lock.json is updated whenever you run npm install. However, this can be disabled globally by setting package-lock=false in ~/.npmrc.

When the global package-lock=false setting is active, you can still force a project’s package-lock.json file to be updated by running:

npm install --package-lock

This command is the only surefire way of forcing a package-lock.json update.

This is answered in the comments; package-lock.json is a feature in npm v5 and higher. npm shrinkwrap is how you create a lockfile in all versions of npm.

As several answer explained the you should run:

npm i

BUT if it does not solve...

Check the version of your npm executable. (For me it was 3.x.x which doesn't uses the package-lock.json (at all))

npm -v

It should be at least 5.x.x (which introduced the package-lock.json file.)

To update npm on Linux, follow these instructions.

For more details about package files, please read this medium story.

If you're like me, you tried all the answers here and wondered why no package-lock.json was appearing in your Git "Changed Files". In this case, check to make sure nobody has added package-lock.json to the .gitignore in the past!

Not really a direct answer, but maybe it will help someone else who spent entirely too long on this 😅

When working with local packages, the only way I found to reliably regenerate the package-lock.json file is to delete it, as well as in the linked modules and all corresponding node_modules folders and let it be regenerated with npm i

If your npm version is lower than version 5 then install the higher version for getting the automatic generation of package-lock.json.

Example: Upgrade your current npm to the version 6.14.0 (example - You can choose any other latest version)

npm i -g npm@6.14.0

You could view the latest npm version list by

npm view npm versions