To discover new releases of the packages, you run npm outdated. 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. 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.īut not for major version changes that break compatibility, which means, in this example, 2.0 and higher. When you npm install cowsay, this entry is added to the package.json file: Let’s say you install cowsay, a cool command line tool that lets you make a cow say things. Npm calculates the dependencies and installs the latest available version of those as well. When you install a package using npm install, 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. How do you update all the npm dependencies store in the package.json file, to their latest version available?

Npm update package