Is it ok to use npm 3.x with nodejs 4.x?

Question

See title. I searched all across the internets and could not find a firm answer.

The reason I want to use npm3 is because I am working in a Windows environment and I am hitting the dreaded too long path name. Migrating off Windows is not a viable option at this time.

Also, I can not upgrade to node 5.x because I use the karma test runner, which is not yet supported on node 5.x

So, I want to use node 4.x with npm 3.x.

I have successfully updated my machine, using the slick npm-windows-upgrade package, to use npm 3 with node 4.

After the upgrade, I did see a couple issues with karma not realizing jasmine/phantomjs was available. The workaround was simply to install both those packages locally.

Answer 1

Yes. The npm 3.x is compatible with node 4.x. In fact, any node >= 0.8 is okay.

This has been documented in https://www.npmjs.com/package/npm#important You need node v0.8 or higher to run this program.

And more, I suggest you to use the nvm https://github.com/creationix/nvm It very easy to switch in various node environments with nvm.

Your jasmine/phantomjs is references by peerDependencies, npm 2.x will install it if missing, and an error will be reported if found version conflict by multiple package.

As you known ,the npm 3.x flatten the package dependencies, peerDependencies will print a line of warn message only(will not be instal), you should manually include peerDependencies in your package.json file, this means it is you that decide which version should be installed.