NPM version bumping and extra files

May 05, 2016

NPM has a handy little feature for bumping the versions on your packages, and it works like this:

npm version [major | minor | patch]

Want to run tests first, minify your code, and only publish the new version if everything works? Sure:

// package.json
{

  ...

  "scripts": {
    "preversion": "npm test",
    "version": "npm run dist && git add -A dist",
    "postversion": "git push && git push --tags && npm publish"
  }
}

Ok, but what if the package has a bower.json, too? Or if other files need to include the current version number? Gulp and Grunt both have plugins to automate this, but NPM scripts don't.

In my case, I wanted to include a RawGit CDN link in my README, and have it always include the latest stable version. Here's what I did:

npm install --save-dev replace

// package.json
{

  ...

  "scripts": {
    "preversion": "npm test",
    "preversion:readme": "replace '/v\\d+\\.\\d+\\.\\d+' \"/v$npm_package_version\" ./README.md",
    "version": "npm run preversion:readme && npm run dist && git add -A dist README.md",
    "postversion": "git push && git push --tags && npm publish"
  }
}

With those four tasks, npm version patch will now:

1. Run your tests, and abort if they fail.
2. Build your dist/ scripts.
3. Bump the version in package.json.
4. Bump the version in README.md.
5. Commit package.json, README.md, and the dist/ output.
6. Create a new tag.
7. Push the commit and tag to GitHub.
8. Publish the new version on NPM.

For more on how this works, see the full documentation on NPM scripts.