CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptmeteor
Amir Rahbaran
Amir Rahbaran

Reputation: 2430

Meteor.js 1.0: what is the difference between the packages and versions file?

Trying to port Crowducate from Meteor 0.8 to 1.0. I ran "meteor update". Results can be seen in this branch: https://github.com/Crowducate/crowducate.me/commit/bc1c8fa81a23fda586980d4803803ef701c762c5

So my questions:

More of info can be found in these github-issues: Porting to Meteor 1.0 and flatten external packages into repo

Any help appreciated.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 946

Answers (1)

Stephan
Stephan

Reputation: 1279

Meteor determines what functionality should be added to a project using the packages file. It contains the names of packages such as email or iron:router. It is agnostic of the version of Meteor you are running, which will eventually lead to serious issues unless you have a mapping of which versions of the packages are good to go (i.e. known to work well together).

The versions file further specifies which actual versions of the packages you are using in a project. You may specify a version using meteor add package:[email protected].

There is a third (hidden) versions information inside each package that defines what other packages it plays well with (see for example this). They define which minimum version they require, something better will probably also work. Here is where a smart versioning scheme comes into play.

Meteor packages use semantic versioning, so you can better tell whether things will break with an upgrade. Semantic versioning means each release consists of major.minor.patch, e.g. x.y.z or 1.1.0. Patches don't change functionality, so any change to z will be harmless. Changes to the minor or y should not break the existing API. New functionality may be added or existing APIs may be changed/deprecated. Changes to major/x are likely to introduce breaking changes and also break dependent packages.

You can find some more info on Arunoda's page: https://meteorhacks.com/meteor-packaging-system-understanding-versioning.html

Technically you are right, why have redundant information in both files, packages seems superfluous when all required info is inside versions already. You will notice that packages only lists the packages you explicitely added to your project while versions includes all dependencies as well. Meteor is smart enough to know that if you remove a package to not bundle the unneeded package dependencies any more. You need both files to better differentiate what was added by the user and what was added automatically using the package manager.

Upvotes: 3

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