3. Managing dependencies

When you want to add, upgrade, or remove dependencies there are a couple of different commands you need to know.

Each command will automatically update your package.json and yarn.lock files.

Adding a dependency

If you want to use another package, you first need to add it as a dependency. In order to do that you should run:

yarn add [package]

This will automatically add the [package] to your dependencies in your package.json. It will also update your yarn.lock to reflect the change.

{
    "name": "my-package",
    "dependencies": {
+     "package-1": "^1.0.0"
    }
  }

You can also add other types of dependencies using flags:

• yarn add --dev to add to devDependencies
• yarn add --peer to add to peerDependencies
• yarn add --optional to add to optionalDependencies

You can specify which version of a package you want to install by specifying either a dependency version or a tag.

yarn add [package]@[version]
yarn add [package]@[tag]

The [version] or [tag] will be what gets added to your package.json and then resolved against when installing the dependency.

For example:

yarn add [email protected]
yarn add package-2@^1.0.0
yarn add package-3@beta

{
  "dependencies": {
    "package-1": "1.2.3",
    "package-2": "^1.0.0",
    "package-3": "beta"
  }
}

Upgrading a dependency

yarn upgrade [package]
yarn upgrade [package]@[version]
yarn upgrade [package]@[tag]

This will upgrade your package.json and your yarn.lock file.

{
    "name": "my-package",
    "dependencies": {
-     "package-1": "^1.0.0"
+     "package-1": "^2.0.0"
    }
  }

Removing a dependency

yarn remove [package]

This will update your package.json and your yarn.lock file.