NPM caret doesn't bring in newest minor version

Question

In my package.json one of my dependencies is... "@packageXXX": "^0.7.0",

When I do a "npm outdated" I see... @packageXXX current: 0.7.0 wanted: 0.7.0 latest: 0.8.0

When I do "npm i" it doesn't install the latest minor version "0.8.0"

My understand is having the caret there is suppose to update to the latest minor version, but it doesn't. Can someone explain what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

This is the case with 0.xx since a leading zero indicates that the package isn't into a "stable" version yet. Until your package hits 1.xx you'll need to do these updates manually (and be careful...your package isn't stable yet, meaning breaking changes can occur!).

https://semver.org/

Major version zero (0.yz) is for initial development. Anything may change at any time. The public API should not be considered stable.

Answer 2

As per nodejs documentation , package ^0.7.0 -> will not be updated to 0.8.0 by npm update

^: It will only do updates that do not change the leftmost non-zero number. If you write ^0.13.0, when running npm update, it can update to 0.13.1, 0.13.2, and so on, but not to 0.14.0 or above. If you write ^1.13.0, when running npm update, it can update to 1.13.1, 1.14.0 and so on, but will not update to 2.0.0 or above.