I've never had this happen before, but now, when I npm install in the root directory of my app, my package-lock.json updates all the packages with node_modules/. What is causing this?
Here's what I get before running npm i
Here's what I get after running npm i
What version of npm (and node) are you using?
npm v7 has been released, and it ships with node v15. That introduces some big changes due to the new support for workspaces... which introduces package-lock.json v2.
I'm going to go out on a limb: I suspect you're running npm v7 locally and your EC2 instances are not.
https://github.blog/2020-10-13-presenting-v7-0-0-of-the-npm-cli/
I was able to reproduce issue from OP's question on my computer by running
npm install -g npm@7
and then running
npx create-react-app my-app
Inspecting my-app/package-lock.json confirmed changed behaviour.
I then downgraded npm to 6.14.11 using
npm install -g npm
Deleted folder my-app and repeated create-react-app step above. This time, inspecting my-app/package-lock.json confirmed "normal" behaviour.