Any way to stop apt-get upgrade downgrading npm to version 2?

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I installed nodejs 4 on Ubuntu 14.04 using node’s official PPA, as described here. It seems like npm v2 is the default so I upgraded npm to v3 using itself (npm update --global). Version 3 is required by the software I am deploying.

Everything is fine until I run regular security updates etc. using apt-get update/upgrade and npm gets consistently downgraded to v2.

Is there any way to prevent npm global packages (specifically npm itself) being altered by apt-get?

Some config files in case useful:

# /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu trusty main restricted
deb-src http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu trusty main restricted
deb http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu trusty-updates main restricted
deb-src http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu trusty-updates main restricted
deb http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu trusty universe
deb-src http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu trusty universe
deb http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu trusty-updates universe
deb-src http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu trusty-updates universe
deb http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu trusty multiverse
deb-src http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu trusty multiverse
deb http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu trusty-updates multiverse
deb-src http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu trusty-updates multiverse
deb http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu trusty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu trusty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security main
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security main
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security universe

# /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodesource.list 
deb https://deb.nodesource.com/node_4.x trusty main
deb-src https://deb.nodesource.com/node_4.x trusty main

Answer

After a bit more searching I found this github thread which seems to suggest you are going to need to do some pinning. I suggest you try adding creating the file /etc/apt/preferences.d/nodejs with the below contents as suggested in that issue.

Package: *
Pin: origin deb.nodesource.com
Pin-Priority: 1001

You can use the apt-cache policy nodejs command before and after configuring pinning to verify that it changes the priorities.

Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : contrebis , Answer Author : Zoredache

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