Update all the Node dependencies to their latest version
How do you update all the npm dependencies store in the package.json file, to their latest version available?
When you install a package using npm install <packagename>
, the latest available version of the package is downloaded and put in the node_modules
folder, and a corresponding entry is added to the package.json
and package-lock.json
files that are present in your current folder.
npm calculates the dependencies and installs the latest available version of those as well.
Let’s say you install cowsay
, a cool command line tool that lets you make a cow say things.
When you npm install cowsay
, this entry is added to the package.json
file:
{
"dependencies": {
"cowsay": "^1.3.1"
}
}
and this is an extract of package-lock.json
, where I removed the nested dependencies for clarity:
{
"requires": true,
"lockfileVersion": 1,
"dependencies": {
"cowsay": {
"version": "1.3.1",
"resolved": "https://registry.npmjs.org/cowsay/-/cowsay-1.3.1.tgz",
"integrity": "sha512-3PVFe6FePVtPj1HTeLin9v8WyLl+VmM1l1H/5P+BTTDkMAjufp+0F9eLjzRnOHzVAYeIYFF5po5NjRrgefnRMQ==",
"requires": {
"get-stdin": "^5.0.1",
"optimist": "~0.6.1",
"string-width": "~2.1.1",
"strip-eof": "^1.0.0"
}
}
}
}
Now those 2 files tell us that we installed version 1.3.1
of cowsay, and our rule for updates is ^1.3.1
, which for the npm versioning rules means that npm can update to patch and minor releases: 1.3.2
, 1.4.0
and so on.
But not for major version changes that break compatibility, which means, in this example, 2.0
and higher.
If there is a new minor or patch release and we type npm update
, the installed version is updated, and the package-lock.json
file diligently filled with the new version.
package.json
remains unchanged.
To discover new releases of the packages, you run npm outdated
.
Here’s the list of a few outdated packages in one repository I didn’t update for quite a while:
Some of those updates are major releases. Running npm update
won’t update the version of those. Major releases are never updated in this way because they (by definition) introduce breaking changes, and npm
want to save you trouble.
To update to a new major version all the packages, install the npm-check-updates
package globally:
npm install -g npm-check-updates
then run it:
ncu -u
this will upgrade all the version hints in the package.json
file, to dependencies
and devDependencies
, so npm can install the new major version.
You are now ready to run the update:
npm update
If you just downloaded the project without the node_modules
dependencies and you want to install the shiny new versions first, just run
npm install
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