NVM provides a easy handling of managing the right node.js and npm versions.
It is crucial to decide what developer you are. Are you the a Windows, a Mac or Linux user?
This installation is done on user level, means not as a root-user.
Setup prerequisites
If you are a Linux user, perfect you will have the easiest path! Linux is developed by developers FOR developers. If you a Mac user it is a bit more complicated as Linux but still very easy. As a windows user? puhh it will take time…
NVM Linux installation
You will need some packages, debian based systems like Ubuntu execute. This commands require root permissions, since installed system wide.
sudo apt update sudo apt install curl wget git
NVM Mac installation
for Mac the package installation is
brew install curl wget git
now go on with the steps of Install NVM
NVM Windows installation
Puhh, we will only briefly describe to setup on a crappy operating system for developers. Also informing you, that this path will cause many really odd issues, so it is NOT suggested to work under Windows with nvm directly.
- install cygwin with bash, wget, curl, git
https://www.cygwin.com/install.html - under cygwin install nvm by
following the steps like under Linux nvm installation described
now go on with the steps of Install NVM
Install NVM
Install NVM to manage different node.js and npm versions
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.1/install.sh | bash
follow the instructions. Sometimes you have to manually add the following string to your bashrc or bash_profile or profile file. Check the output of the above command and execute accordingly. If it is missing use the output from the above command to add.
vi ~/.bashrc
scroll at the end check if already added, if not add
export NVM_DIR="$([ -z "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}" ] && printf %s "${HOME}/.nvm" || printf %s "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/nvm")"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm
to use the nvm immediately in current terminal run
source ~/.bashrc
Using nvm
Now we need to install node.js and npm. We only work with LTS versions due to being more stable. So we can stick to version numbers or to LTS releases. In this example we will stick to lts/gallium which is
- node.js v16.x
- npm 8.19.x
nvm install lts/gallium nvm use lts/gallium
Test the version
npm version
This should return some similar version like
{
npm: '8.19.2',
node: '16.18.0',
...
}
Also we recommend to set it as default version
nvm alias default lts/gallium
