Magento 2 - what does the require means in composer json?

Question

"require": {
        "segmentio/analytics-php": "^1.5",
    }

This code is there in composer json, when i have composer update the segmentio lib version changed from 1.5 to 1.7 not sure why.

Answer 1

require means, the package you are installing require this package: please check link

The ^ in module version represent version number up to it can be update.

For example ^1.5 is equivalent to >=1.5 <2.0.0

For more information see link