Is there a way to use the latest version of the Ionic Framework? The one directly from the v2 branch on Github?
If I update package.json and do npm install I can get up to Beta 3, but there’s some changes that I need that I can’t wait until they’re bundled on Beta 4 and packaged.
I think you should follow this link
My question is more like if there’s something I can change in package.json to point to the v2 branch on Github, or if I should just download the code and paste it into node_modules/ionic-angular
The instructions in this post might help you (they are for the alpha, but it should be the same for the beta too):
EDIT: Something I forgot to mention - a word of caution when using symlinks (for TS-projects, but I guess that it might be valid for JS-projects too), at least until Ionic moves away from Webpack:
Thanks @iignatov you pointed me in the right direction, although I’m not 100% there yet.
I ended up changing one line in config.xml from:
"ionic-angular": "2.0.0-beta.3",
to:
"ionic-angular": "driftyco/ionic#2.0",
This downloads the latest version, but it does so under node_modules/ionic2 instead of node_modules/ionic-angular.
I changed the directory name manually but then I started getting errors on ionic serve. Seems it downloads a different structure tree. I may just have to can this idea. (I’m not too well versed with npm packages)
Well, I never tried this myself, so I can only guess: the problem might be that Ionic releases come already pre-compiled to JS, while when downloading directly the latest (source) code, you’ll need an additional build step.
We also have some steps (a bit hidden) here:
https://github.com/driftyco/ionic/blob/2.0/scripts/README.md#developing-against-ionic-locally
This requires you to download the ionic repo and be on the 2.0 branch for the first three steps, then be in your project directory for the last two.
Thank you for linking to that comment! I updated it to point to the latest instructions. 
@brandyshea thank you! That totally did it!
@brandyshea, I’m glad I could help. 