[RRFC] Support running outdated command against a package-lock without installing

[ZLJasonG]

Motivation ("The Why")

Currently to run the outdated check the packages have to be installed first, this can be a comparatively slow process depending on the complexity of dependencies involved. To facilitate quicker checks particularly in a CI environment it would be useful to be able to execute the command and receive the same quality of output without having to run the install first.

Example

git clone some-node-repo
npm outdated

How

Current Behaviour

outdated does run but it gives a completely different result rendering it unusable

Package                             Current  Wanted  Latest  Location  Depended by
babel-plugin-syntax-dynamic-import  MISSING  6.18.0  6.18.0  -         api-data-test

Desired Behaviour

Package            Current  Wanted  Latest  Location                        Depended by
@babel/cli          7.17.6  7.28.6  7.28.6  node_modules/@babel/cli         api-data-test
@babel/core         7.17.8  7.29.0  7.29.0  node_modules/@babel/core        api-data-test
@babel/preset-env  7.16.11  7.29.5  7.29.5  node_modules/@babel/preset-env  api-data-test

References

• n/a

[owlstronaut]

@ZLJasonG currently npm audit has a --package-lock-only that works like this. Adding an option like that for outdated would be a non-breaking change, and you'd likely see it much sooner than changing the default here.

If something like that interested you, I'd be inclined to accept a PR that made this additive contribution.

[ZLJasonG]

Yes using a flag to get the changed behaviour would be perfectly acceptable to avoid a breaking change.
Thanks