Updating NPM Packages

1. Navigate to the root directory of your project and ensure it contains a package.json file:
   • cd /path/to/project
2. In your project root directory, run the outdated command to view outdated packages:
   • npm outdated
3. In your project root directory, run the update command:
   • npm update

package.json

The way the wanted version is set in the package.json file may affect how updates are decided.

Version numbers are declared as a [major, minor, patch] tuple.

Caret Ranges ^1.2.3

Allows changes that do not modify the left-most non-zero element of the version specification. So 1.3.1 will update to 1.3.2 or 1.4.0. Though, 0.3.0 will update to 0.3.1 but not update to 0.4.0.

Version will update if:

• ^1.2.3 : 1.2.3 < version < 2.0.0
• ^0.3.0 : 0.3.0 < version < 0.4.0

X-Ranges

Allows ‘X’, ‘x’, or ‘*’ to stand in for a number in the version specification.

Version will update if:

• “” : any version
  • same as “*” or “x.x.x”
• 1.x.x : 1.0.0 < version < 2.0.0
  • same as “1”
• 1.2.x : 1.2.0 < version < 1.3.0
  • same as “1.2”

Tags: nodejsnpmpackage manager