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Wrong npm version in GitHub actions #535
Description
With the introduction of Trusted Publishers it is now important to use npm >= 11 to avoid errors. Setting up a simple GH action
jobs:
publish:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
name: Release
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v6
- uses: actions/setup-node@v6
with:
node-version: '24'
- run: npm -v
- run: npx semantic-release
env:
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}And my release.config.js set like this:
export default {
// ....
plugins: [
// ...
[
'@semantic-release/exec',
{
prepareCmd: 'npm -v'
}
]
]
}The logs will show two completely different npm versions 11.12.1 and 10.9.2. Attempting to explicitly set the shell with shell: '/bin/bash' or executing the command bash -c 'npm -v' does not solve the issue. My impression is that exec commands are running outside the execution environment set by the actions/setup-node@v6.
Activity
travi commentedon Apr 4, 2026
we depend directly on the npm cli as a dependency of our npm plugin for this reason. if youre using latest versions of semantic-release and, transitively, our npm plugin. that should handle ensuring that the proper npm version is availble at publish time.
if you are up to date and still seeing problems,
svaraborut commentedon Apr 11, 2026
Using npm not pnpm. semantic-release is part of the dependencies defined in package.json. My usecase needs the execution of a custom command that has the issues mentioned above.
For now I ended up running a separate Action step after the semantic-release command.
travi commentedon Apr 11, 2026
i dont understand. why are you running npm through exec rather than through the npm plugin that is already bundled with semantic-release? the npm plugin depends directly on the npm cli as a dependency to ensure a version compatible with trusted publishing is used. this exec plugin does not know about that dependency, so
npm -vwould likely not match the version used by the npm plugin.