npx lets you run different versions of Hugo without installation. To use it, install Node.js and npm at first.

Run different versions

The syntax of npx is npx <package-name>@<version>. If @<version> is not specified, the locally installed version or latest version will be used. Here are some examples:

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# local installed version or latest version
npx hugo-extended
# Hugo latest
npx hugo-extended@latest
# Hugo v0.121.0
npx [email protected]
npx [email protected] version
npx [email protected] server
# Hugo v0.99.1
npx [email protected] version

Available versions are listed here. Oldest version is 0.63.2. If you want to use the older versions, use hugo-bin package instead. Its version doesn’t match the Hugo version, so you have to check its commit history.

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# Hugo v0.121.0
npx [email protected] version

Install a specific version

You can install a specific version of Hugo in a git repository.

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cd cyrusyip-blog
# install Hugo v0.99.1
npm install --save-dev [email protected]
# ignore local npm packages
echo 'node_modules' >> .gitignore
# commit change
git add --all
git commit --message 'add Hugo'
# use
npx hugo version # Hugo v0.99.1

To change the version, run install command again.

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npm install --save-dev [email protected]
npm install --save-dev hugo-extended@latest # latest version

If you clone the repository, install Hugo before using it.

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git clone --recursive https://github.com/CyrusYip/cyrusyip-blog.git
cd cyrusyip-blog
npm install
npx hugo version # Hugo v0.99.1

Clean cache

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# clean npx cache
npx clear-npx-cache
# clean npm cache
npm cache clean --force

Note about package-lock.json

By default, the directory name of source code will be shown in the name field in package-lock.json. To override that, set name field in package.json and run npm install.

Example of package.json:

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{
  "name": "cyrusyip-blog",
  "devDependencies": {
    "hugo-extended": "^0.125.6"
  }
}

This tutorial was tested with npm/npx v10.5.2 and Node.js v21.7.3 on Arch Linux.