This shouldn't be an issue at all. Your app would get libxy 1.4, and your dependency would get libxy 1.2. It shouldn't matter which is loaded first, and unless

This shouldn't be an issue at all. Your app would get libxy 1.4, and your dependency would get libxy 1.2. It shouldn't matter which is loaded first, and unless those modules somehow store something globally, they shouldn't conflict in any way. npm does solve the "multiple versions of a library are used by different packages", unless that libxy you were using did something fishy. Can you give more details?