Last updated on Wed, 14 Aug 2024 22:12 UTC

NPM

Upgrading

Somehow, updating to later versions of your packages is like fucking pulling teeth. Maybe one day I’ll get it right.

# find out what's outdated
# this does not check max versions on dependencies
# just what versions are possible
npm outdated

# to simply update minor versions within your package.json specification
# this is in my experience, a useless waste of time
npm update

# to ACTUALLY accomplish what you want, use this tool
# it will actually force updates past what package.json specifies
npm i -g npm-check-updates
ncu -u

# examples of manually installing a newer version
# this is more work than just using the tool
npm i package@version
npm i gulp@latest
npm i @babel/eslint-parser@12.0.0

# when you can't install something because
# of a dependency, find out why it's installed
npm ls package
# example
npm ls color-string

Versioning

Syntax	Details	Example
version	Must match version exactly	“foo”: “1.0.0”
>version	Must be greater than version	“foo”: “>1.0.0”
>=version	Greater than or equal to version	“foo”: “>=1.0.0”
<version	Must be less than version	“foo”: “<1.0.0”
<=version	Less than or equal to version	“foo”: “<=1.0.0”
~version	Allow new patch versions (1.0.1)	“foo”: “~1.0.0”
^version	Allow new minor or patch versions (1.1.1)	“foo”: “^1.0.0”
1.2.x	1.2.0, 1.2.1, etc., but not 1.3.0	“foo”: “1.0.x”
http://…	URL to tarball dependency	“foo”: “http://asdf.com/asdf.tar.gz"
*	Matches any version	“foo”: “*”
"”	Same as *	“foo”: ""
version1 - version2		“foo”: “1.0.0 - 2.0.0”
range1 \|\| range2	Same as >=version1 <=version2	“foo”: “1.0.0 \|\| 2.0.0”
git://…	Git URL Dependency	“foo”: “git://github.com/npm/cli.git”
user/repo	GitHub package Dependency	“foo”: “expressjs/express”
path/path/path	local path	“foo”: “file:../foo”