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Discussion on: What are your tools for keeping dependencies and plugins versions up-to-date?

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bradstondev profile image
Bradston Henry

Hi Cécile!

That's a good question and I am interested to see how other teams/devs have handled managing framework/dependency versioning through projects.

In one of my past projects (where I joined mid-development), I took it upon myself to create some documentation for tracking this.

So per technology( React, iOS, etc) , I created a simple wiki that showed all the frameworks that we had implemented in our project and the current version that anyone on the project could view and/or update.

Essentially it looked something like this (and this was in a grid):


My React Project Name

Framework Name | Framework URL | Version | last updated

Matter.js | brm.io/matter-js | 0.17.1 | May, 14th, 2021

React Router | reactrouter.com | 5.1.0 | April 3rd, 2021
....


And then periodically, team members would update it when they changed Frameworks or updated things.

Only problem with this strategy is that your team has to remember to make the updates and yes.....they will forget without reminders. So someone needs to own the success of it.

I wouldn't say it's the best strategy but it was better than nothing. Just a lot of possible human-error.

I also wonder if there is an automated tool that would do that for you.

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cfecherolle profile image
Cécile Fécherolle

I too wondered about writing down versions in a common documentation or something along those lines, so it's nice to see someone tried the same thing!

Thanks for your feedback. I'd say tech leads should "own" this responsibility but I can't see it working without reminders or automated tools: we are humans, after all :)