Upgrading from Angular 2 RC5 to RC7 – watch out for required NPM version

I skipped RC6 and made the jump straight from RC5 to RC7.

First step was to upgrade the versions of my dependencies (both the “dependencies” and “devDependencies”) in the package.json file. To get the magic recipe of what versions of each dependency were needed I referred back to the QuickStart guide on the Angular.io website.

{
"name": "myapp",
"version": "1.0.0",
"scripts": {
"start": "tsc && concurrently \"npm run tsc:w\" \"npm run lite\" ",
"lite": "lite-server",
"postinstall": "typings install",
"tsc": "tsc",
"tsc:w": "tsc -w",
"typings": "typings"
},
"license": "ISC",
"dependencies": {
"@angular/common": "2.0.0-rc.7",
"@angular/compiler": "2.0.0-rc.7",
"@angular/compiler-cli": "0.6.1",
"@angular/core": "2.0.0-rc.7",
"@angular/forms": "2.0.0-rc.7",
"@angular/http": "2.0.0-rc.7",
"@angular/platform-browser": "2.0.0-rc.7",
"@angular/platform-browser-dynamic": "2.0.0-rc.7",
"@angular/router": "3.0.0-rc.3",
"@angular/upgrade": "2.0.0-rc.7",
"systemjs": "0.19.27",
"core-js": "^2.4.1",
"reflect-metadata": "^0.1.3",
"rxjs": "5.0.0-beta.12",
"zone.js": "^0.6.21",
"angular2-in-memory-web-api": "0.0.19",
"bootstrap": "^3.3.6"
},
"devDependencies": {
"concurrently": "^2.2.0",
"gulp": "3.9.1",
"lite-server": "^2.2.2",
"typescript": "^1.8.10",
"typings": "^1.3.2"
}
}

Running npm install with the upgraded dependencies was failing for me with the following error:

npm ERR! argv "c:\\Program Files (x86)\\nodejs\\node.exe" "c:\\Program Files (x86)\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\\npm-cli.js" "install"
npm ERR! node v4.4.3
npm ERR! npm v2.15.1
npm ERR! code EPEERINVALID
npm ERR! peerinvalid The package typescript@1.8.10 does not satisfy its siblings' peerDependencies requirements!
npm ERR! peerinvalid Peer @angular/compiler-cli@0.6.1 wants typescript@^2.0.2
npm ERR! Please include the following file with any support request:
npm ERR! C:\Projects\….\npm-debug.log


From the Angular.io documentation https://angular.io/docs/ts/latest/guide/npm-packages.html it states than you must have node 4.x.x or higher, and npm 3.x.x or higher.

You can see from the error message above that I have node v4.4.3 (good) and npm v2.15.1 (bad).

So my fix was to upgrade npm to at least v3. I followed this information in this thread to upgrade npm to the latest available version by:

Opening cmd.exe as administrator
Navigating to C:\Program Files (x86)\nodejs
Running this command: npm install npm@latest


Running an npm install on the project now works after upgrading npm to v3.10.7. I now a warnings relating to some peer dependencies instead of the failures.

npm WARN optional Skipping failed optional dependency /lite-server/browser-sync/chokidar/fsevents:
npm WARN notsup Not compatible with your operating system or architecture: fsevents@1.0.14
npm WARN optional Skipping failed optional dependency /karma/chokidar/fsevents:
npm WARN notsup Not compatible with your operating system or architecture: fsevents@1.0.14
npm WARN @angular/compiler-cli@0.6.1 requires a peer of typescript@^2.0.2 but none was installed.