Cannot upgrade or remove firebase from system

Question

I cannot, as the title suggests, upgrade or in any way remove the current version of firebase off my system and I don't understand why. I installed it using the firebase commands prompted when you first start a project, something in line with npm install -g firebase-tools. After I've installed other packages to go along with it and I've upgraded the packages accordingly.

Now I want to remove the package I just do not understand how to do it. I've run

npm uninstall -g firebase-tools

npm uninstall -g firebase-admin

npm uninstall -g firebase-functions

npm uninstall -g firebase*

...and many other variations. After a while of trying I just figured I'll check what packages may still be left.

npm ls | grep firebase

Shows no firebase packages are still installed, however, running any firebase command will still work perfectly. Running firebase --version I get 3.15.4. I've also, just as a Hail Mary, tried running apt remove --purge firebase*

Further digging I figured that maybe the npm ls command was off, so I tried reinstalling all firebase packages. I ran it again and there they were, however* firebase was now at version 4.12.1. Running firebase --version still produce 3.15.4.

I'm really lost at this point. All help articles relating to uninstalling firebase leads to either how to delete projects or databases or to npm's how to uninstall a package website.

Sincerely.

Answer 1

You can't delete it, because you need to remove entire folder. This worked for me when I ran into the same problem:

which firebase

This locates the folder where firebase is (in Mac case it's /usr/local/bin/firebase) and then you do:

rm /usr/local/bin/firebase

Now do firebase -V and you'll get Command firebase not found. And now you can install back firebase with the real latest actual version:

npm i -g firebase-tools@latest

However, if you run firebase it will still give you Command firebase not found for what you can do this:

alias firebase="`npm config get prefix`/bin/firebase"

Worked for me with almost exactly the same problem.

Hope this helps you too!