Npm install latest version of a package install#

Npm update -save is broken, in that it will update all your dependencies and devDependencies (if you use -dev), and save the updated semver ranges for the dependencies it updates. If you want to update the whole tree, you’ll need to include something like -depth=12 as an argument.

Npm install latest version of a package install#

This is because update used to do… questionable things when run at all levels of the install tree, which is what used to cause npm update -g to scramble your global installs, including sometimes breaking npm itself. Npm update, by default, will only update the top-level dependencies. In the case of npm update, it will update the dependencies to the maximum version of the package that satisfies the semver range.

In the case of npm install, if there’s a version of the package that matches the semver range in the current tree’s package.json, the installer will consider that version sufficient and not do anything. Thanks for your does fix this a bit, in that it makes the separation of responsibilities of npm install and npm update clearer. Is all this behavior actually expected? What I mean is, is this future-proof? Can I rely on this behavior for updating my dependencies to their latest compatible version? If so, it may be worth adding a note to the npm-install docs. However, I could not find this behavior documented anywhere. Looks like npm install packageName satisfies all my conditions above.

Should be recursive: it should walk the given package's whole dependency tree, updating dependencies to the latest version which satisfies the given version range listed in its parent's package.json.

Should check if there are new versions of the package and its dependencies even if the given package is already installed in the node_modules directory.

Should update a package to the latest version which satisfies the version range determined in the package.json's dependencies/ devDependencies.

The command above, when executed in a directory containing a package.json with a 'grunt': '^0.3.15' dependency, will install Grunt 0.3.17 (the current latest version compatible with the ^0.3.15 range).