update-check

This is a very minimal approach to update checking for globally installed packages.

Because it's so simple, the error surface is very tiny and your user's are guaranteed to receive the update message if there's a new version.

You can read more about the reasoning behind this project here.

Usage

Firstly, install the package with yarn...

yarn add update-check

...or npm:

npm install update-check

Next, initialize it.

If there's a new update available, the package will return the content of latest version's package.json file:

const pkg = require('./package');
const checkForUpdate = require('update-check');
 
let update = null;
 
try {
    update = await checkForUpdate(pkg);
} catch (err) {
    console.error(`Failed to check for updates: ${err}`);
}
 
if (update) {
    console.log(`The latest version is ${update.latest}. Please update!`);
}

That's it! You're done.

Configuration

If you want, you can also pass options to customize the package's behavior:

const pkg = require('./package');
const checkForUpdate = require('update-check');
 
let update = null;
 
try {
    update = await checkForUpdate(pkg, {
        interval: 3600000,  // For how long to cache latest version (default: 1 day)
        distTag: 'canary'   // A npm distribution tag for comparision (default: 'latest')
    });
} catch (err) {
    console.error(`Failed to check for updates: ${err}`);
}
 
if (update) {
    console.log(`The latest version is ${update.latest}. Please update!`);
}

Contributing

1. Fork this repository to your own GitHub account and then clone it to your local device
2. Link the package to the global module directory: npm link
3. Within the module you want to test your local development instance of the package, just link it: npm link update-check. Instead of the default one from npm, node will now use your clone.

Author

Leo Lamprecht (@notquiteleo) - ZEIT