npm install error ENOTEMPTY: directory not empty,

Question

I encountered the following error when I tried to install some new packages using npm install. It happened when I did npm install a-new-package --save and then delete package-lock.json file afterwards to refresh everything.

npm ERR! code ENOTEMPTY
npm ERR! syscall rename
npm ERR! path /Users/memphismeng/Documents/React Programming/Foot-in-The-Door/mobile/fitd/node_modules/@babel/plugin-proposal-decorators
npm ERR! dest /Users/memphismeng/Documents/React Programming/Foot-in-The-Door/mobile/fitd/node_modules/@babel/.plugin-proposal-decorators-ysLLPQFw
npm ERR! errno -66
npm ERR! ENOTEMPTY: directory not empty, rename '/Users/memphismeng/Documents/React Programming/Foot-in-The-Door/mobile/fitd/node_modules/@babel/plugin-proposal-decorators' -> '/Users/memphismeng/Documents/React Programming/Foot-in-The-Door/mobile/fitd/node_modules/@babel/.plugin-proposal-decorators-ysLLPQFw'

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /Users/memphismeng/.npm/_logs/2021-06-15T18_07_01_162Z-debug.log

What went wrong? I also tried npm audit fix --legacy-peer-deps but it didn't work.

Answer 1

May be deleting node_modules folder and package-lock.json file and then reinstalling npm would resolve your issue.

So, consider the following commands to apply the above operations:

npm remove node_modules 
npm remove package-lock.json
npm install 

Answer 2

I had the same problem while having a slow and unreliable Internet connection. I created this script that can be run with bash that fixes all of the interrupted installs:

#!/bin/bash
set -e

while true; do
  log="$HOME/.npm/_logs/`ls $HOME/.npm/_logs/ | tail -n 1`"
  echo "log: $log"
  for path in `cat "$log" | grep 'ENOTEMPTY' | grep -oE "[^']+node_modules[^']+"`; do
    echo "removing $path"
    rm -rf "$path"
  done
  if npm install; then
    break
  fi
done

Basically, I use the approach from https://stackoverflow.com/a/69668434/1320237 but I just had too much do deal with manually.

Note: While it looks to me like it has a O(n * n) run time, it might have a O(n) download time for n = number of packages. So it is useful for slow Internet. You might be faster to just delete the node_modules directory if your Internet connection is fast.