Question 120845 in Firebase Question posted in
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Multiple Versions of Firebase Installed – Which Do I Use?

I’m trying to build an app with Firebase and ran a few commands to see which version I have. To follow along with a 2021 instruction video, I was hoping to have Firebase v9. Depending on the command that I run, I somehow have versions 8 and 11. If I have these two versions, which one is actually being used? What is the difference between seemingly having an npm firebase and non-npm firebase installed?

armadillo@armadillo-MacBook-Air my-app % npm firebase --version
8.11.0
armadillo@armadillo-MacBook-Air my-app % firebase -V
11.2.2
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2

Answers


  1. 0

    If you’re trying to work with the Firebase CLI, you should be looking at the firebase-tools npm package, not firebase. They are definitely not the same thing.

    npm firebase-tools --version

    I suggest reviewing the documentation as well.

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  2. 0

    As covered by @Doug‘s answer, the firebase command is defined by the firebase-tools npm package (or by https://firebase.tools if installed that way) not the firebase package, which does not define any command line utilities.

    Additionally, npm --version returns the version of npm you have installed. This includes if you add the name of a package there. (i.e. npm thisCouldBeAnythingNotANPMCommand --version will return the same result)

    If you want to view the version of a deployed package, you would use one of the following commands to query NPM’s database:

    npm view firebase version      (view package's "version" field)
npm v firebase version         (view package's "version" field, using shorthand)
npm view firebase              (get all available package information)

    If you want to view the version of a package installed in your project or globally, you would use:

    npm ls firebase                (local install)
npm ls -g firebase-tools       (global install)

    If you want to view the where the npm-installed commands are, you would use:

    npm bin                        (local install)
npm bin -g                     (global install)

    For the firebase command, the firebase/firebase.cmd/firebase.ps1 files all point to <global bin directory>/node_modules/firebase-tools/lib/bin/firebase.js.

    Compare the results of:

    > npm v firebase version
9.9.0
> npm ls firebase
`-- [email protected]      (an old project directory for another SO answer)
> npm v firebase-tools version
11.2.2
> npm ls -g firebase-tools
`-- [email protected]      (updated since :D)
> npm --version
6.4.12
> npm firebase --version
6.4.12
> npm v npm version
8.14.0                         (updated since :D)
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