Does npm honour newer prerelease versions in semver?
node.js, npm, semantic-versioning
Solution
I seemed to have answered my own question. From the main page at semver.org:
Precedence for two pre-release versions with the same major, minor, and patch version MUST be determined by comparing each dot separated identifier from left to right until a difference is found as follows: identifiers consisting of only digits are compared numerically and identifiers with letters or hyphens are compared lexically in ASCII sort order. Numeric identifiers always have lower precedence than non-numeric identifiers. A larger set of pre-release fields has a higher precedence than a smaller set, if all of the preceding identifiers are equal. Example: 1.0.0-alpha < 1.0.0-alpha.1 < 1.0.0-alpha.beta < 1.0.0-beta < 1.0.0-beta.2 < 1.0.0-beta.11 < 1.0.0-rc.1 < 1.0.0.
Problem
In my app, I have users install dependencies by running `npm install` -- bog standard behaviour. However, I have one package that changes frequently, and in an effort to not end up with a ridiculously large version number like `0.1.12324`, I stumbled upon the concept of pre-releases. How does npm treat prerelease numbers when running `npm install`? Assuming my package `packageA` has a version number of `0.1.1-r1234`, and my users have a dependency semver of `~0.1.1`: I know that a new user without `packageA` installed will automatically have that version (`0.1.1-r1234`) installed. What if someone already has `packageA` installed, of version `0.1.1-r1233`? Does `npm install` know to install the newer pre-release?