How to update npm

Question

I'm trying to install mean.io boilerplate. It fails when running sudo npm install -g meanio@latest. Prior to failing it notes that it 'wants' npm version 1.4.x, whereas I have 1.2.18 installed. So I tried updating npm to the latest; several ways. Last of which was...

ubuntu@ip-xxx-xx-xx-xxx:~$ sudo npm install -g npm /usr/local/bin/npm -> /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js [email protected] /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm  ubuntu@ip-xxx-xx-xx-xxx:~$ npm --version 1.2.18 

Why is it still showing version 1.2.18, when I just updated to 1.4.7?

Answer 1

This will update npm using npm itself:

sudo npm install npm -g 

If you are stuck, try sudo npm update npm -g. All credit goes to Tim Castelijns. I have tested it on ubuntu 14.04, npm 1.3.10

---

Note that if you are using nvm for managing multiple versions in your local dev environment for e.g. testing purposes, all your installed versions (listed by nvm ls) are in ~/.nvm, hence you just omit system wide installation (i.e. omit sudo):

npm install npm -g 

---

DEBIAN ENTERPRISE

For full enterprise practice consider nodesource.com:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup | sudo bash -

as described here.

OTHER ENTERPRISE

For non-debian distributions check out on the node github wiki https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/installing-node.js-via-package-manager download page https://nodejs.org/en/download/

For historical understanding: Chis Lea was maintaining his PPA but now joined forces with nodesource.