Make `npm install --save` add a strict version to package.json

Solution 1:

To specify by default a exact version, you can change your npm config with save-exact:

npm config set save-exact true

You can also specify the prepend version with a tilde with save-prefix.

And, no you can't force user to update to a minor or a patch version, NPM uses semver and it's the recommend way of publishing packages.

Solution 2:

You can change the default behaviour by using the --save-exact option.

// npm
npm install --save --save-exact react

// yarn
yarn add --exact react

I created a blog post about this if anyone is looking for this in the future.

https://www.dalejefferson.com/blog/how-to-save-exact-npm-package-versions/

Solution 3:

Run:

npm install --save --save-exact my-module@my-specific-version

_{Adding an answer to make this advice easier to see.}