installing-node-tools

Cross-platform node tool installation instructions to be linked from READMEs/documentation

Contents

• Introduction
• macOS
• linux
• windows

Introduction

You're here because you need to install a tool that uses nodeJS, and it's not obvious how to do that. These instructions try to make it as painless as possible.

Here are some things to be aware of:

• don't use the instructions on the NodeJS website
• don't use whatever package manager you use for your OS generally (e.g.apt, brew, chocco)
• don't use admin privileges or sudo when installing node or any node tool
• do use a nodeJS version manager - this lets you keep node up to date, and switch versions easily
• do install everything in userspace - this prevents complex permissions issues and limits security concerns

Node.js version manager

Whatever operating system you use, you'll need to install Node.js. We recommend doing this using nvm - the node version manager (or for windows, nvm-windows).

macOS

prerequisites: developer tools

If you're on macOS/OSX, you'll need to install either:

• XCode, Apple's developer environent, free from the mac App Store
• the command-line developer tools.

installing nvm

Open a terminal and run this command:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.30.1/install.sh | bash

If it fails because you don't have curl installed, try using wget instead:

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.30.1/install.sh | bash

Follow the instructions that appear in the terminal - it will ask you to close the terminal once it's done.

installing node

After you've closed and re-opened your terminal, you'll need to tell nvm to install the latest version of Node, and set it as default:

nvm install 7
nvm use 7
nvm alias default 7

installing a node tool:

npm install --global some-node-tool

linux

installing nvm

Open a terminal and run this command:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.30.1/install.sh | bash

If it fails because you don't have curl installed, try using wget instead:

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.30.1/install.sh | bash

Follow the instructions that appear in the terminal - it will ask you to close the terminal once it's done.

installing node

After you've closed and re-opened your terminal, you'll need to tell nvm to install the latest version of Node, and set it as default:

nvm install 7
nvm use 7
nvm alias default 7

installing a node tool:

npm install --global some-node-tool

windows

installing nvm-windows

Go to the downloads page and download nvm-setup.zip for the latest version.

Unzip the downloaded file and run the included installer.

installing node

Open your command-line program (we recommend cmder if you don't have one yet), then run:

nvm install 7
nvm use 7

installing a node tool:

npm install --global some-node-tool