extend npm audit or create a new command to check for stale packages

[telion2]

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Hello everyone.
So I worked on quite a number of projects (mostly vue related) and therefore used quite a number of npm packages.
I love the npm audit command since that tells me which npm packages have vulnerabilities.

However, I have a concern:

What about those old libraries that aren't in the focus of security testers anymore and are not actively maintained?
How do I even see those?

Well, one place to start is to use npm outdated, but.... it only shows you libraries that have a new version available.

So I created a little script (surely to be optimised) that finds libraries used in a given project that haven't been updated the past 6 months (intended to be used in a gitlab environment):

#!/bin/bash

if ! command -v jq &>/dev/null; then
    echo "jq is required but not installed. Please install jq." >&2
    exit 1
fi


echo "🛠 Installing npm dependencies..." >&2
npm ci --no-audit --no-fund

echo "🔍 Auditing npm dependencies..." >&2
npm audit --audit-level=high
AUDIT_STATUS=$?

# Check for outdated libraries
echo "Checking for outdated libraries..." >&2
npm outdated
OUTDATED_STATUS=$?

# Check for libraries not updated in a while (e.g., > 6 months)
echo "Checking for stale libraries (not updated in over 6 months)..." >&2
STALE_LIBS=()
STALE_ROWS=()
STALE_STATUS=0
NOW=$(date +%s)
HALF_YEAR=$((182*24*60*60))

for dep_type in dependencies devDependencies; do
    deps=$(jq -r ".$dep_type | keys[]" package.json 2>/dev/null || true)
    dep_count=$(echo "$deps" | wc -w)
    i=0
    spinner=("|" "/" "-" "\\")
    for dep in $deps; do
        i=$((i+1))
        spin_char=${spinner[$((i % 4))]}
        echo -ne "\rCollecting info for $dep_type ($i/$dep_count) $spin_char" >&2
        CURRENT=$(jq -r ".${dep_type}[\"$dep\"]" package.json)
        LATEST=$(npm view "$dep" version 2>/dev/null || echo "-")
        LAST_PUBLISH=$(npm view "$dep" time.modified 2>/dev/null || echo "-")
        if [[ "$LAST_PUBLISH" != "-" ]]; then
            LAST_PUBLISH_SEC=$(date -d "$LAST_PUBLISH" +%s)
            AGE=$((NOW - LAST_PUBLISH_SEC))
            if (( AGE > HALF_YEAR )); then
                # Calculate years, months, days
                YEARS=$((AGE / 31536000))
                REM=$((AGE % 31536000))
                MONTHS=$((REM / 2592000))
                REM=$((REM % 2592000))
                DAYS=$((REM / 86400))
                DELTA=""
                [[ $YEARS -gt 0 ]] && DELTA="${YEARS}y "
                [[ $MONTHS -gt 0 ]] && DELTA="${DELTA}${MONTHS}m "
                [[ $DAYS -gt 0 ]] && DELTA="${DELTA}${DAYS}d"
                STALE_ROWS+=("$(printf "%-30s %-10s %-10s %-20s" "$dep" "$CURRENT" "$LATEST" "$DELTA")")
                STALE_LIBS+=("$dep")
            fi
        fi
    done
    echo -ne "\r" >&2
    echo "" >&2
done
echo "" >&2
if (( ${#STALE_LIBS[@]} > 0 )); then
    STALE_STATUS=1
    echo "::warning file=audit.bash::Some dependencies are stale and may be unmaintained." >&2
    printf "%-30s %-10s %-10s %-20s\n" "Package" "Current" "Latest" "Last Update"
    for row in "${STALE_ROWS[@]}"; do
        echo "$row"
    done
fi

if (( AUDIT_STATUS != 0 || OUTDATED_STATUS != 0 || STALE_STATUS != 0 )); then
    exit 1
fi

echo "✅ All dependencies are up-to-date and maintained." >&2

This somewhat works for me, but I noticed that while this script is simple, it has some drawbacks:

• It is somewhat brutal. Meaning there a projects that might not get updated a lot because they don't need to.
• It only checks dependencies in package.json, but not the nested dependencies
• It only looks at the last updated date, not anything else.
• It's a bit slow

So I was wondering:

1. Am I overly concerned about stale packages? Are they not a security risk?
   2. If looking for stale packages is valuable, why not do it in the npm audit command as well? Or a new one?
   (That is also beneficial for npm, because doing it DIY might result in more traffic for npm)

User Story wording:
I, as a npm-using developer, want to know what projects are stale in the CLI and CI environment, so that I can know which packages to replace due to them becoming stale and unmaintained.

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