The npm CLI team has been working hard over the past few months and are happy to announce the release of the next major version – v9.0.0

Installation

You can start using npm v9.0.0 today by running:

$ npm i -g npm@9

About this release

Our goal with this major release was to standardize appropriate defaults and clean up legacy configurations where possible. We believe the changes made lay the ground-work for future improvements to the default npm experience long-term. Notably, Docker users should find this release to to be beneficial as we simplifie file permissions (ref. #5703 & #5704).

Timeline to GA

Although we have published v9.0.0, we are not immediately setting this release to latest in the npm registry or considering this “Generally Available.” Our team has been coordinating with the Node.js Release WG on a phased approach to making v9 the next major version of the CLI available to the widest audience; this means ensuring v9 can be safely backported to as many Node.js LTS versions as possible. With that in mind, we’ve put together a phased roll-out plan outlined below:

  • Wednesday Oct. 19th
    • npm@9.0.0 was released & set to the next-9 dist-tag (previously used for pre-releases)
    • The CLI team will continue to cut minor & patch versions of v9.x, addressing any feedback or unexpected issues arising from the breaking changes (outlined below)
  • Wednesday Nov. 9th (General Availability)
    • To ensure npm@9.x is considered "non-breaking" for Node.js LTS we will codify a set of exit criteria in collaboration with the Release WG
    • npm@9.x will be set to the latest dist-tag (becoming the latest, maintained version of npm)
    • A PR will be opened to land npm@9.x in nodejs/node's main branch (exposing experimental/nightly users to this latest version)
  • Wednesday Dec. 7th (~4 weeks after GA)
    • A PR will be opened to backport npm@9.x in node@19
  • Wednesday Jan. 18th (~6 weeks after node@19 backport)
    • A PR will be opened to backport npm@9.x in node@18

⚠️ Notable Breaking Changes

  • the compatible semver ranges of node have been updated to: ^14.17.0 || ^16.13.0 || >=18.0.0
  • npm will no longer attempt to modify ownership of files it creates
  • the presence of auth related settings that are not scoped to a specific registry found in a config file is no longer supported and will throw errors
  • login, adduser, and auth-type changes
    • legacy auth types sso, saml & legacy have been consolidated into "legacy"
    • auth-type defaults to "web"
    • login and adduser are now separate commands that send different data to
      the registry.
  • npm pack now follows a strict order of operations when applying ignore rules. If a files array is present in the package.json, then rules in .gitignore and .npmignore files from the root will be ignored.
  • links generated from git urls will now use HEAD instead of master as the default ref
  • timing and loglevel changes
    • timing has been removed as a value for --loglevel
    • --timing will show timing information regardless of
      --loglevel, except when --silent
  • --timing file changes:
    • When run with the --timing flag, npm now writes timing data to a
      file alongside the debug log data, respecting the logs-dir option and
      falling back to <CACHE>/_logs/ dir, instead of directly inside the
      cache directory.
    • The timing file data is no longer newline delimited JSON, and instead
      each run will create a uniquely named <ID>-timing.json file, with the
      <ID> portion being the same as the debug log.
    • Finally, the data inside the file now has three top level keys,
      metadata, timers, and unfinishedTimers instead of everything being
      a top level key.
  • npm now outputs some json errors on stdout. Previously npm would output all json formatted errors on stderr, making it difficult to parse as the stderr stream usually has logs already written to it.
  • deprecated boolean install flags in favor of --install-strategy
    • deprecated --global-style, --global now sets --install-strategy=shallow
    • deprecated --legacy-bundling, now sets --install-strategy=nested
  • npm config set will no longer accept deprecated or invalid config options
  • install-links config defaults to "true"
  • node-version config has been removed
  • npm-version config has been removed
  • npm access subcommands have been renamed
  • npm birthday has been removed
  • npm set-script has been removed
  • npm bin has been removed (use npx or npm exec to execute binaries)

Notable Features

  • a09e19d #5696 new npm config fix command (@nlf)
  • 3445da0 npm timings are now written alongside debug log files (@lukekarrys)
  • 6ee5b32 query: now displays queryContext in results (@nlf)
  • 314311c #5550 separated login/adduser (@wraithgar)
  • de2d33f add --install-strategy=hoisted|nested|shallow (#5709) (@fritzy)

For more information about this release, check out the GitHub release notes.