Update guidance for @angular/* packages

[IgorMinar]

Bug Report or Feature Request (mark with an x)

- [ ] bug report -> please search issues before submitting
- [x] feature request

Versions.

@angular/cli: 1.0.0
node: 6.9.5
os: darwin x64
@angular/animations: 4.0.0
@angular/common: 4.0.0
@angular/compiler: 4.0.0
@angular/core: 4.0.0
@angular/forms: 4.0.0
@angular/http: 4.0.0
@angular/material: 2.0.0-beta.2
@angular/platform-browser: 4.0.0
@angular/platform-browser-dynamic: 4.0.0
@angular/platform-server: 4.0.0
@angular/router: 4.0.0
@angular/service-worker: 1.0.0-beta.8
@angular/cli: 1.0.0
@angular/compiler-cli: 4.0.0

Repro steps.

n/a

The log given by the failure.

n/a

Desired functionality.

One of the major initiatives within Angular is to ensure that developers are using the latest versions of all of our packages. This includes @angular/core as well as @angular/cli and @angular/material.

Currently, we don't have a good way to ensure that developers know about our releases. We publish new versions to npm and announce them on twitter, but then it's up to developers to actually pull the latest versions of all packages to their project.

If a developer is using yarn or npm with shrinkwrap, then they have to take a step to update the lock files. If they don't use lock files, then they receive updates the next time they happen to reinstall their npm dependencies.

It would be great if we could find a way to notify developers about available updates in a way that strikes the balance between being helpful in ensuring that projects have up-to-date dependencies and not being annoying.

Several options to consider:

• before scaffolding a new project, check if there is a new version of cli that the user should update to before the project is scaffolded
• when developer calls ng serve they could get a notification to that their dependencies are outdated, with instructions on how to update.
• when updates are available, it would be great to have a single command that they can use to bump the versions.

[babilog]

@IgorMinar , great idea! Not sure yet of the complexity behind this feature, would you consider this a good first PR issue? Willing to progress this if so. Thanks!

[chaosmonster]

• checking for version before scaffolding is a great idea.
• ng serve feels a little bit heavy to me, as I use it very frequently. If I don't want to update my project this can get a little bit noisy and with a lot of unnecessary calls. So I don't prefer that.
• a way to bump the versions with the cli sounds nice and I like that.

I also would like to suggest a ng update command that bumps the versions, runs tests and reverts the version with warnings if the tests failed. Otherwise the version bump will (if existing) be commited to the git.

[alan-agius4]

Related also to: #14603
 and #16611

[angular-robot]

Just a heads up that we kicked off a community voting process for your feature request. There are 20 days until the voting process ends.

Find more details about Angular's feature request process in our documentation.