Testing dependencies

node-test-package.js

#!/usr/bin/env node

var spawn = require('child_process').spawn;

var list = spawn('npm', ['list', '--json']);
var result = "";

list.stdout.on('data', function (data) {
  result += data;
});

list.on('close', function(code) {
  var data = JSON.parse(result);
  if (data.problems) {
    data.problems.forEach(function(problem) {
      console.error('  ' + problem);
    });
  }
  else {
    console.log('  Your packages look good!');
  }
  process.exit(code);
});

package.json

{
  "name": "node-test-package",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "description": "Test your your installed packages against your dependencies.",
  "main": "node-test-package.js",
  "bin": {
    "node-test-package": "./node-test-package.js"
  }
}

thing-you-are-test.package.json

{
  "name": "thinger",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "description": "I gots me some bad deps",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "node_modules/node-test-package/node-test-package.js && run-actual-tests"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "node-test-package": "~0.1.0"
  }
}

The incantation that handles my use case seems to be npm ls --depth=Infinity > /dev/null. The --depth argument overrides the npm_config_depth=null environment variable that is set up by npm for the test lifecycle.