Publish an npm prerelease (beta/next) without affecting the latest tag
domain: npmjs.com · 5 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Bump to a prerelease version, e.g. `npm version prerelease --preid=beta` to move from 1.2.0 to 1.2.1-beta.0 (or use prepatch/preminor/premajor).
Publish under a temporary tag so it is not picked up as latest: `npm publish --tag=beta` (or --tag=next).
Optionally convert the beta to a stable stream later by tagging it as latest or republishing as a normal version.
Verify with `npm view <name> dist-tags` to confirm 'latest' still points to the previous stable release.
Consumers can opt in with `npm install <name>@beta`.
Known gotchas
Publishing without --tag always sets the 'latest' tag, which silently makes prerelease users' default installs and watches point at the unstable version.
Preid controls the identifier after the hyphen (the 'beta' in 1.2.1-beta.0).
npm dist-tag add can repoint a tag after the fact, but you cannot reuse a published name+version.
Official docs: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v10/commands/npm-publish
Official docs: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v10/commands/npm-dist-tag
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