Updating npm packages in node project

If the previous version of npm packages are already available locally inside node_modules folder, following should do the job:

npm update
rm package-lock.json
mkdir empty && rsync -r --delete empty/ node_modules && rm -r node_modules empty
npm install

If you don't have previous npm packages locally:

# list updates before actually upgrading
npx npm-check-updates --target minor
# run the upgrade
npx npm-check-updates --upgrade --target minor

# do it carefully as upgrading major versions might break things
npx npm-check-updates --upgrade
rm package-lock.json
mkdir empty && rsync -r --delete empty/ node_modules && rm -r node_modules empty
npm i

How to update packe-lock.json without installing packages?

rm package-lock.json
npm i --package-lock-only