applying updates for authored yeoman generator to npm global install/update

Question

I have authored my own yeoman generator for the inuit.css framework and published it to npm. The repo lives here on github.

I've since noticed a bug in my generator (thanks to another user) which has been fixed, tested and committed back to the generators github repo with a new version tag, however I can not figure out how to apply that update for when someone runs npm install -g generator-inuit or npm update -g generator-inuit

Do I need to republish the yeoman generator back to npm? Also, how do I alert people who are using the generator that an update is available?

Answer 1

Yes, you need to republish your new version to NPM using npm publish. Note that you'll need to bump the version inside your package.json file (npm doesn't uses git tag for versioning).

After that, there's no direct way to let your user know an update is available. You can blog about it, talk on twitter, etc... Note that yo will notify user after a while if they're using an outdated version of a generator. This process is done automatically.

Also, lots of node.js folks uses david package to checkout when updates are available for their packages.