As we can see, the Angular SPA Template uses fixed version numbers for all the Angular-related packages; this is definitely a wise choice since we have no guarantees that newer versions will seamlessly integrate with our existing code without raising some potentially breaking issues and/or compiler errors. Needless to say, the version number will naturally increase with the passage of time, because the template developers will definitely try to keep their good work up to date.
That said, these are the Angular packages and releases that will be used within this book:
"@angular/animations": "5.0.2",
"@angular/common": "5.0.2",
"@angular/compiler": "5.0.2",
"@angular/compiler-cli": "5.0.2",
"@angular/core": "5.0.2",
"@angular/forms": "5.0.2",
"@angular/http": "5.0.2",
"@angular/platform-browser": "5.0.2",
"@angular/platform-browser-dynamic": "5.0.2",
"@angular/platform-server": "5.0.2",
"@angular/router": "5.0.2"
As we can see, the version number is the same for all packages and corresponds to the Angular release currently installed.
If we want to ensure the highest possible level of compatibility between our project and this book's source code, we should definitely adopt that same release, which, at the time of writing, also corresponds to the latest stable one. We can easily perform the upgrade--or downgrade--by changing the version numbers; as soon as we save the file, Visual Studio will automatically fetch the new versions through NPM. In the unlikely case it won't, manually deleting the old packages and issuing a full rebuild should be enough to fix the issue.
As always, we're free to overwrite such behavior and get newer (or older) versions of these packages, assuming that we properly understood the consequences and according to this chapter's Disclaimer.
If you encounter problems while updating your package.json file, such as conflicting packages or "broken" code, ensure that you download the full source code from the official GitHub repository of this book, which includes the same package.json file that has been used to write, review, and test this book; it will definitely ensure a great level of compatibility with the source code you'll find here.