refinedev/refine · warning · Error

Timed out while checking for updates.

Error message

Timed out while checking for updates.

What it means

refine CLI's update checker runs the package manager's 'outdated --json' command with a 25 second timeout; if the registry lookup doesn't finish in time it aborts and reports this error instead of stale results.

Source

Thrown at packages/cli/src/commands/check-updates/utils.ts:17

import type { NpmOutdatedResponse } from "@definitions/package";
import { pmCommands } from "@utils/package";
import execa from "execa";

/**
 * @returns `npm outdated` command response
 */
export const getOutdatedPackageList = async () => {
  const pm = "npm";

  const { stdout, timedOut } = await execa(pm, pmCommands[pm].outdatedJson, {
    reject: false,
    timeout: 25 * 1000,
  });

  if (timedOut) {
    throw new Error("Timed out while checking for updates.");
  }

  if (!stdout) return null;

  return JSON.parse(stdout) as NpmOutdatedResponse | null;
};

View on GitHub (pinned to 779d52a20e)

Solutions

1. Retry when the network/proxy is responsive
2. Configure the correct registry/proxy for your package manager (npm config set registry / HTTPS_PROXY)
3. If it blocks work, skip or disable the update check and run `npm outdated` manually

Example fix

// before (slow registry)
npm config set registry https://registry.example.internal
refine check-updates
// after
npm config set registry https://registry.npmjs.org
refine check-updates

npm ping # verify registry reachability before running refine check-updates

try { await runCheckUpdates(); } catch (e) { if (e.message.includes('Timed out')) { /* proceed without update check */ } }

When it happens

Trigger: Slow network, offline/proxied environment, or an unresponsive npm/yarn/pnpm registry causing `npm outdated --json` to exceed 25s while running `refine check-updates` (or a command that triggers the update check).

Common situations: Corporate proxies, CI runners with restricted egress, registry mirrors being slow, or VPN conditions; large monorepos where outdated takes long.

Understand the failure class

• Timeouts: ETIMEDOUT, deadlines, and hung requests — what actually expires when a request times out.

Related errors

• Package manager not found.
• Invalid provider: ${providerId}
• ./package.json not found
• jscodeshift exited with code ${result.exitCode}
• Refine will use `./build/index.js` as default

AI-assisted analysis of refinedev/refine@779d52a20e (2026-08-27). Data as JSON: /api/errors/c2d250da5a470661. Report an issue: GitHub.