Supported Node.js Versions in the npm CLI

We’ve talked about our support policy before and it hasn’t changed but I wanted to take a moment to provide some clarification.

Supported Major Versions

The npm CLI supports running on any version of Node.js currently supported by the Node.js Foundation. That is, we support the most recent version (even if that’s not an LTS release) and we support any version still in maintenance.

With npm@5 we support 4, 6 and 8. That will likely expand to include Node.js 9 if we don’t have an npm@6 by then.

Staying Up to Date

We support the latest release of each major version we support. So that means that at the time of this writing we support v4.8.4, v6.11.3, and v8.4.0. We simply cannot support the huge number of individual releases, particularly when there are often bugs that have been already fixed in them.

Changing Supported Major Versions

We will not drop support for a major version of Node.js without a major version bump in npm itself. This means that npm’s support for a major Node.js version won’t change until sometime after it drops out of maintenance. So, for example, when Node v4 drops out of maintenance in April 2018 npm will continue to support it until its next major version, whatever that may be.