NPM Contributor Count

This is a tool that counts the number of people who have access to a project on npm, either directly or indirectly. Every single module you import, or any module that those modules import (and so on), can put your project at risk so it is important to understand the exposure you are receiving when you add an npm package as a dependency to your project. I've writte a bit about this here.

Usage

To test all of the dependencies for the package in your local directory:

> npx contributor-count
local package has 19 contributors with access to the project or its dependencies
>

To test all of the dependencies for a given package on npm:

> npx contributor-count express
express has 106 contributors with access to the project or its dependencies
>

You can also use it as a library:

const count = require('contributor-count')

const name = 'express'
const version = 'latest'
const target = { name, version }

count(target)
.then(count => console.log('The count is', count))
.catch(err => console.error('Failed to get count', err))

Technical Notes

This counter does not consider packages which reference off-npm sources, such as a direct git repository or a tar file since it's not clear how to quantify the number of people with access to these reliably.

This counter only considers the number of people with direct npm publish rights for the package or one of its dependencies. It does not consider the possibility of a vulnerability being introduced through a packages repository or CI system.

This counter only considers dependencies which are required for usage and does not include unlisted dependencies, peer dependencies, or developer dependencies.