Problems updating bower to the latest version

Question

I am using bower

$ bower -v
0.9.2

latest version of bower is 1.x.x https://github.com/bower/bower/releases

I run to update bower to the latest version

npm update -g bower 

this does not help

I still have

$ bower -v
0.9.2

Answer 1

There could be a lot of moving parts here. First you should try

npm cache clean
sudo npm cache clean
npm update -g bower

…which is –given all the moving parts– not very likely to work for you.

On Mac, using brew and nvm with some history, you would do something like this:

1. figure out where bower is now

 $ which bower
 /usr/local/share/npm/bin/bower
 $ ls -hal /usr/local/share/npm/bin/bower
 lrwxr-xr-x  1 iwein  admin    35B Dec 15  2013 /usr/local/share/npm/bin/bower -> ../lib/node_modules/bower/bin/bower
 $ ls -hal /usr/local/share/npm/lib/node_modules/bower/bin/bower 
 -rwxr-xr-x  1 iwein  staff   3.3K Sep 17  2013 /usr/local/share/npm/lib/node_modules/bower/bin/bower
 $ bower -v
 1.2.8
 $ rm -rf /usr/local/share/npm/lib/node_modules/bower

2. reinstall bower using npm

 $ npm install -g bower
 /Users/iwein/.nvm/v5.11.1/bin/bower -> /Users/iwein/.nvm/v5.11.1/lib/node_modules/bower/bin/bower
 /Users/iwein/.nvm/v5.11.1/lib
 └── bower@1.7.9

 $ bower -v
 bash: /usr/local/share/npm/bin/bower: No such file or directory
 $ which bower
 /Users/iwein/.nvm/v5.11.1/bin/bower
 $ bower
 bash: /usr/local/share/npm/bin/bower: No such file or directory
 $ ls -hal ~/.nvm/v5.11.1/bin/bower
 lrwxr-xr-x  1 iwein  staff    35B Jun  1 11:53 /Users/iwein/.nvm/v5.11.1/bin/bower -> ../lib/node_modules/bower/bin/bower

3. open a new terminal

…or source your .profile or whatever. Check if you're using the same node version (implying a different nvm version if you don't)

 $ which bower
 /Users/iwein/.nvm/v0.10.24/bin/bower
 $ bower -v
 1.4.1
 $ nvm use 5
 Now using node v5.11.1
 $ which bower
 /Users/iwein/.nvm/v5.11.1/bin/bower
 $ bower -v
 1.7.9

And you're good.

Note that:

1. you have to make sure you are installing in the right place, you may need multiple versions of bower, nvm, npm or node on your system for different projects…
2. you need to restart the terminal to make sure the linking is done correctly.

Answer 2

Probably the bower update worked fine, it's just missing update environment var.

On my Ubuntu was something like:

ln -sf /usr/local/n/versions/node/6.2.0/bin/bower /usr/bin/bower

Answer 3

1) you have to clear npm cache and then update bower

sudo npm cache clean
npm update -g bower

2) If 1st solution does not help

try to remove and install it again

npm -g uninstall bower
npm -g install bower

check if it is still here

which bower

if it will show you something like

/usr/local/bin/bower

then

rm <path from previous command>

and after install it again

npm -g install bower

open new bash window and enjoy latest version of bower

same will help with other packages