a safe way to upgrade all of your globally-installed npm packages

npm-upgrade-bleeding.sh

#!/bin/sh

set -e
set -x

for package in $(npm -g outdated --parseable --depth=0 | cut -d: -f3)
do
    npm -g install "$package"
done

npm-upgrade.sh

#!/bin/sh

set -e
set -x

for package in $(npm -g outdated --parseable --depth=0 | cut -d: -f2)
do
    npm -g install "$package"
done

Thanks for the npm-check util update!

This caused me a lot of heartburn...hope it helps others who find the thread.

The --parseable flag changes the order of the output from npm outdated without the flag.

npm outdated -g --depth=0 produces output according to the header → current | wanted | latest
npm outdated -g --depth=0 --parseable produces output in a different order → wanted | current | latest

# current
npm outdated <package> -g --depth=0 --parseable | cut -d: -f3

# wanted 
npm outdated <package> -g --depth=0 --parseable | cut -d: -f2

# latest
npm outdated <package> -g --depth=0 --parseable | cut -d: -f4

@jsonkarns: if you don't have /bin/sh, you don't have UNIX.

@othiym23 I don't follow. The env isn't to guard against not having sh. It's to ensure that these scripts run against the user's preferred sh executable. For example, running against a homebrew-built sh instead of old system install. Since these scripts are intended to be used directly by the user (and not automated or as part of a utility), then they should be run against the user's chosen executable.

FYI: npm @2.6.1+ does not recursively update dependencies by default anymore.
https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/update

+1 @dylang , thanks bro!!!

+1 @dylang npm-check for president!

+1 @dylang npm-check

+1 @dylang npm-check

+1 for npm-check

+1 for npm-check
should have emotion for answer in gist, which easy to rise a thumbsub on @dylang's anwser

+1 @dylang npm-check

If you have linked some personal package to global then you should use:

#!/bin/sh
set -e
set -x
for package in $(npm -g outdated --parseable --depth=0 | grep -v @linked | cut -d: -f2)
do
    npm -g install "$package"
done

As this will not try to update your local linked package. Actually this should be the default case since it works even when you don't have linked packages.

I love npm-check too, but my poor man hardware with low memory hates it. So I have developed a very simple package to list outdated packages, install selected ones and update my package.json rules. It will not check for unused or missing packages like npm-check does. But will work with global packages too, and my machine likes it... If you want to take a look: atualiza.

This one-liner made the trick for me: npm -gp outdated | cut -d: -f4 | xargs -n1 npm -g install

the one liner updated npm for me :(

+1 @dylan
npm -g i npm-check

+1 @dylang npm-check

npm outdated -g seems to have stopped working too. Does not print anything at all here though there definitely are outdated packages.

npm outdated -g was fixed a while back and works with npm version 6.4.1.

Running npm v6.8.0 and seeing this problem again. Global packages won't update beyond "wanted".

> npm outdated --global
Package        Current  Wanted  Latest  Location
color-convert    1.9.3   1.9.3   2.0.0
mocha            5.2.0   5.2.0   6.0.0
pdfkit           0.8.3   0.8.3   0.9.0

> npm update --global pdfkit
# does nothing

> npm update --global pdfkit@latest
# does nothing

> npm install --global pdfkit
+ pdfkit@0.9.0
added 8 packages from 41 contributors and updated 22 packages in 9.638s

If you prefer to choose which global modules are updated I've added interactive updating to npm-check with support for global.

It also includes links to the source for each updated package so you can find out what's new.

Behind the scenes npm-check uses npm install thanks to the recommendation from @othiym23 in this thread.

# install
npm -g i npm-check

# interactive update of global packages
npm-check -u -g

# interactive update for a project you are working on
npm-check -u

Example using npm-check -u:

Source: github.com/dylang/npm-check

Great, bro! Thanks! :D

The Wanted version shall be another major version, which is not very favorable, since it can break things.

Here is a way to upgrade only minor versions of global packages:

npm_global_packages=($(npm list -g --depth 0 | awk '/ /{print $2}'))
for val in "${npm_global_packages[@]}"; do
    npm i -g --force $(echo $val | tr "." "\n" | head -1)
done

more context

Good part is, that it will not bump npm to a version that is incompatible with the current node version, so this will most likely not break.