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Semantic Versioning using npm

Semantic Versioning is a convention used to provide a meaning to versions

If there’s one great thing in Node.js packages, is that all agreed on using Semantic Versioning for their version numbering.

The Semantic Versioning concept is simple: all versions have 3 digits: x.y.z.

When you make a new release, you don’t just up a number as you please, but you have rules:

The convention is adopted all across programming languages, and it is very important that every npm package adheres to it, because the whole system depends on that.

Why is that so important?

Because npm set some rules we can use in the package.json file to choose which versions it can update our packages to, when we run npm update.

The rules use those symbols:

Let’s see those rules in detail:

You can combine some of those notations, for example use 1.0.0 || >=1.1.0 <1.2.0 to either use 1.0.0 or one release from 1.1.0 up, but lower than 1.2.0.

There are other rules, too:

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