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Why Running `yarn upgrade` Does Not Update My `package.json`

Wei Gao on April 22, 2019

Why Running yarn upgrade Does Not Update My package.json Today I wanted to upgrade the dependency of React of one of my projects. So I r...
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muhammadmuzammilqadri profile image
Muhammad Muzammil •

Nice article, but there is one little mistake that I found, which is:

yarn upgrade --latest on dependency "react": "^16.5.1": installs the latest version 16.8.6 as of today, and DOES NOT update package.json to "react": ^16.8.6". AS THE VERSION 16.8.6 IS ALREADY IN THE SPECIFIED RANGE ^16.5.1

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Can Rau •

Great write up 👏

I prefer to use yarn upgrade-interactive --latest thankfully Oh My ZSH' Git plugin cones with a alias yui
Anyway, upgrading interactive let's me see and selectively upgrade and it updates package.json as well 🥳

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Rasmus Schultz •

But what is a proper way for me to upgrade dependency in this semantic situation? Namely, to upgrade dependency to latest package and indicating that my app now depends on that version?

So this there?

This is what I'm trying to answer - I don't feel like this article reached a conclusion on this question... unless the answer is "no"?

yarn upgrade --latest does not respect version constraints - it installs the latest available versions, even if that conflicts with your constraints: "react": "^16.5.1" will change it to "react": "^18.2.0" which is not what I wanted.

I just want to upgrade to the next compatible version and update my package.json.

That's not a thing?

(I'm about a week into yarn and it's uber frustrating how many little ways it deviates from npm. I hate it. I wish it didn't exist. Why did we have to split the entire ecosystem in two like this? Because yarn used to be faster? ugh.)

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mindplay profile image
Rasmus Schultz • • Edited

Okay, so I finally found the answer I was looking for:

yarn upgrade
npx syncyarnlock --save --keepPrefix
yarn install
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yarn upgrade will respect your version constraints - as opposed to yarn upgrade --latest, which will most likely break everything.

syncyarnlock will transfer the installed version numbers from yarn.lock to package.json, plain and simple - the --save option makes it write the changes back to package.json, so you can git diff and review the results, while --keepPrefix will preserve the ^ or ~ operators in your existing package.json version constraints.

yarn install finally will update your yarn.lock using the updated version constraints - it won't install anything new at this point, but this step is required, or yarn will complain later that your yarn.lock is outdated with the new version constraints in your updated package.json.

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Renan Oliveira •

That was fantastic, thanks!!

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jianwu •

It's just a weird design of yarn upgrade. Anyway thanks for your article which saved my day.

I faced a bug because of the old dependencies. Tried yarn upgrade, never get it to work.

I finally upgraded all my versions in my package.json and solved my problem by removing the version range. And run:

yarn upgrade --latest

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Kos-M •

thanks for the :

 yarn upgrade react@^
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Tan Li Hau •

That's why yarn.lock is important...

...And are we getting react hooks soon?!

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Arthur Vincent Simon •

Yup, I had the same problem with yarn upgrade.

I solved this by mandating specific versions in package.json so that there is no ambiguity about what version is installed.

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Jeff Lowery •

But the microversion number changes are supposed to be bug fix patches not expected to change behavior. You want to manage all those by hand? Seems tedious.

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Sergii Shymko • • Edited

Have been using yarn upgrade --exact. The flag forces the command to override package.json no matter how the version constraint is declared.

yarn upgrade react --latest --exact
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Sergii Shymko • • Edited

Actually, discovered that sometimes package.json is not being updated.

Looks like yarn add is more reliable than yarn upgrade:

yarn add react --exact
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The downside it will install a new package if it has not been installed yet.

This technique can be used to upgrade all packages in a given scope:

jq -r '.dependencies | keys | .[] | select(startswith("@myscope/"))' package.json | xargs yarn add --exact
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Steve Huguenin-Elie •

Simply use yarn upgrade all

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Rasmus Schultz •

Great if you just want to upgrade this 😉

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Sergio Turpín •

Good article Wei!! Just clarified my doubt ;)

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K. N. •

Saved my butt, thanks

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Jorge Cuevas •

POG solution, I was beating my head with this.