node_modules

Creates a hermetic node_modules directory in the Bazel sandbox containing exactly the specified packages and their transitive dependencies.

Usage

load("@rules_typescript//npm:defs.bzl", "node_modules")

node_modules(
    name = "node_modules",
    deps = ["@npm//:vitest", "@npm//:react", "@npm//:react-dom"],
)

Reference in ts_test:

ts_test(
    name = "my_test",
    srcs = ["my.test.ts"],
    deps = [":my_lib"],
    node_modules = ":node_modules",
)

Attributes

Attribute	Type	Default	Description
deps	label_list	[]	npm package targets from @npm to include in node_modules

When to Use

node_modules is needed for targets that require node_modules/ at runtime — vitest requires it to load ESM packages, for example. Pure compilation targets (ts_compile) do not need it; they reference npm packages via depsets.

Use one node_modules target per test suite or dev server target. Share it across multiple ts_test targets in the same package to avoid duplicating the directory tree in the sandbox.