it should be possible to run a dedupe instead of a lockfile delete with most package managers. The topic came up in the office-hours 2 weeks ago. I thought I would put together here how and whether this could be implemented

Package manager support

npm

npm should have build in dedupe https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v10/commands/npm-dedupe

pnpm

https://pnpm.io/cli/dedupe

yarn

https://yarnpkg.com/cli/dedupe

bun

planned: oven-sh/bun#8594 (comment)

nuxi upgrade

• nuxi upgrade should prompt if user wants to dedupe lockfile, recreate lockfile or just update nuxt
• nuxi upgrade --dedupe should skip prompt and dedupe lockfile if supported. Should fallback to nuxi upgrade if not supported and warn user
• --force should have higher priority than --dedupe
• (--force could inform the user if --dedupe is supported)