If you’ve been using Node and npm for a while, you are probably aware of Semantic Versioning, or SemVer for short. It’s a convention for specifying version numbers for software that helps communicate intentions to the users of your software.
Semantic versions are always made up of three numbers:
major.minor.patch
Semantic version numbers are bumped (incremented) using the following rules:
A simple mnemonic for remembering this scheme is as follows:
breaking.feature.fix
Due to its dependency on Node and Chromium, it is not possible for the Electron project to adhere to a SemVer policy. You should therefore always reference a specific version of Electron.
Electron version numbers are bumped using the following rules:
0.37.0
to 1.0.0
, you will have to make changes to your app.1.5.0
to 1.6.0
, your app is supposed to still work, but you might have to work around small changes.1.6.2
to 1.6.3
, your app will continue to work as-is.We recommend that you set a fixed version when installing Electron from npm:
npm install electron --save-exact --save-dev
The --save-exact
flag will add electron
to your package.json
file without using a ^
or ~
, e.g. 1.6.2
instead of ^1.6.2
. This practice ensures that all upgrades of Electron are a manual operation made by you, the developer.
Alternatively, you can use the ~
prefix in your SemVer range, like ~1.6.2
. This will lock your major and minor version, but allow new patch versions to be installed.