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nvm is a version manager for node.js, designed to be installed per-user, and invoked per-shell. nvm works on any POSIX-compliant shell (sh, dash, ksh, zsh, bash), in particular on these platforms: unix, macOS, and windows WSL.
Installing and Updating
Install & Update Script
To install or update nvm, you should run the install script. To do that, you may either download and run the script manually, or use the following cURL or Wget command:
Running either of the above commands downloads a script and runs it. The script clones the nvm repository to ~/.nvm, and attempts to add the source lines from the snippet below to the correct profile file (~/.bash_profile, ~/.zshrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.bashrc).
If the environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is present, it will place the nvm files there.
You can add --no-use to the end of the above script (...nvm.sh --no-use) to postpone using nvm until you manually use it.
You can customize the install source, directory, profile, and version using the NVM_SOURCE, NVM_DIR, PROFILE, and NODE_VERSION variables.
Eg: curl ... | NVM_DIR="path/to/nvm". Ensure that the NVM_DIR does not contain a trailing slash.
The installer can use git, curl, or wget to download nvm, whichever is available.
Troubleshooting on Linux
On Linux, after running the install script, if you get nvm: command not found or see no feedback from your terminal after you type command -v nvm, simply close your current terminal, open a new terminal, and try verifying again.
Alternatively, you can run run the following commands for the different shells on the command line:
bash: source ~/.bashrc
zsh: source ~/.zshrc
ksh: . ~/.profile
These should pick up the nvm command.
Troubleshooting on macOS
Since OS X 10.9, /usr/bin/git has been preset by Xcode command line tools, which means we can't properly detect if Git is installed or not. You need to manually install the Xcode command line tools before running the install script, otherwise, it'll fail. (see #1782)
If you get nvm: command not found after running the install script, one of the following might be the reason:
Since macOS 10.15, the default shell is zsh and nvm will look for .zshrc to update, none is installed by default. Create one with touch ~/.zshrc and run the install script again.
If you use bash, the previous default shell, your system may not have a .bash_profile file where the command is set up. Create one with touch ~/.bash_profile and run the install script again. Then, run source ~/.bash_profile to pick up the nvm command.
You have previously used bash, but you have zsh installed. You need to manually add these lines to ~/.zshrc and run . ~/.zshrc.
You might need to restart your terminal instance or run . ~/.nvm/nvm.sh. Restarting your terminal/opening a new tab/window, or running the source command will load the command and the new configuration.
If the above didn't help, you might need to restart your terminal instance. Try opening a new tab/window in your terminal and retry.
If the above doesn't fix the problem, you may try the following:
If you use bash, it may be that your .bash_profile (or ~/.profile) does not source your ~/.bashrc properly. You could fix this by adding source ~/<your_profile_file> to it or follow the next step below.
Try adding the snippet from the install section, that finds the correct nvm directory and loads nvm, to your usual profile (~/.bash_profile, ~/.zshrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.bashrc).
For more information about this issue and possible workarounds, please refer here
which should output nvm if the installation was successful. Please note that which nvm will not work, since nvm is a sourced shell function, not an executable binary.
Important Notes
If you're running a system without prepackaged binary available, which means you're going to install nodejs or io.js from its source code, you need to make sure your system has a C++ compiler. For OS X, Xcode will work, for Debian/Ubuntu based GNU/Linux, the build-essential and libssl-dev packages work.
Note:nvm also support Windows in some cases. It should work through WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) depending on the version of WSL. It should also work with GitBash (MSYS) or Cygwin. Otherwise, for Windows, afew alternatives exist, which are neither supported nor developed by us:
fish-nvm - Wrapper around nvm for fish, delays sourcing nvm until it's actually used.
Note: We still have some problems with FreeBSD, because there is no official pre-built binary for FreeBSD, and building from source may need patches; see the issue ticket:
Note: On OS X, if you do not have Xcode installed and you do not wish to download the ~4.3GB file, you can install the Command Line Tools. You can check out this blog post on how to just that:
Note: On OS X, if you have/had a "system" node installed and want to install modules globally, keep in mind that:
When using nvm you do not need sudo to globally install a module with npm -g, so instead of doing sudo npm install -g grunt, do instead npm install -g grunt
If you have an ~/.npmrc file, make sure it does not contain any prefix settings (which is not compatible with nvm)
You can (but should not?) keep your previous "system" node install, but nvm will only be available to your user account (the one used to install nvm). This might cause version mismatches, as other users will be using /usr/local/lib/node_modules/* VS your user account using ~/.nvm/versions/node/vX.X.X/lib/node_modules/*
Homebrew installation is not supported. If you have issues with homebrew-installed nvm, please brew uninstall it, and install it using the instructions below, before filing an issue.
Note: If you're using zsh you can easily install nvm as a zsh plugin. Install zsh-nvm and run nvm upgrade to upgrade.
Note: Git versions before v1.7 may face a problem of cloning nvm source from GitHub via https protocol, and there is also different behavior of git before v1.6, and git prior to v1.17.10 can not clone tags, so the minimum required git version is v1.7.10. If you are interested in the problem we mentioned here, please refer to GitHub's HTTPS cloning errors article.
Git Install
If you have git installed (requires git v1.7.10+):
clone this repo in the root of your user profile
cd ~/ from anywhere then git clone https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm.git .nvm
cd ~/.nvm and check out the latest version with git checkout v0.38.0
activate nvm by sourcing it from your shell: . ./nvm.sh
Now add these lines to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.zshrc file to have it automatically sourced upon login:
(you may have to add to more than one of the above files)
export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s"$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] &&\."$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"# This loads nvm
[ -s"$NVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] &&\."$NVM_DIR/bash_completion"# This loads nvm bash_completion
Manual Install
For a fully manual install, execute the following lines to first clone the nvm repository into $HOME/.nvm, and then load nvm:
Now add these lines to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.zshrc file to have it automatically sourced upon login:
(you may have to add to more than one of the above files)
export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s"$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] &&\."$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"# This loads nvm
Manual Upgrade
For manual upgrade with git (requires git v1.7.10+):
To download, compile, and install the latest release of node, do this:
nvm install node # "node" is an alias for the latest version
To install a specific version of node:
nvm install 6.14.4 # or 10.10.0, 8.9.1, etc
The first version installed becomes the default. New shells will start with the default version of node (e.g., nvm alias default).
You can list available versions using ls-remote:
nvm ls-remote
And then in any new shell just use the installed version:
nvm use node
Or you can just run it:
nvm run node --version
Or, you can run any arbitrary command in a subshell with the desired version of node:
nvm exec 4.2 node --version
You can also get the path to the executable to where it was installed:
nvm which 5.0
In place of a version pointer like "0.10" or "5.0" or "4.2.1", you can use the following special default aliases with nvm install, nvm use, nvm run, nvm exec, nvm which, etc:
stable: this alias is deprecated, and only truly applies to nodev0.12 and earlier. Currently, this is an alias for node.
unstable: this alias points to nodev0.11 - the last "unstable" node release, since post-1.0, all node versions are stable. (in SemVer, versions communicate breakage, not stability).
Long-term Support
Node has a schedule for long-term support (LTS) You can reference LTS versions in aliases and .nvmrc files with the notation lts/* for the latest LTS, and lts/argon for LTS releases from the "argon" line, for example. In addition, the following commands support LTS arguments:
Any time your local copy of nvm connects to https://nodejs.org, it will re-create the appropriate local aliases for all available LTS lines. These aliases (stored under $NVM_DIR/alias/lts), are managed by nvm, and you should not modify, remove, or create these files - expect your changes to be undone, and expect meddling with these files to cause bugs that will likely not be supported.
To get the latest LTS version of node and migrate your existing installed packages, use
If you want to install a new version of Node.js and migrate npm packages from a previous version:
nvm install node --reinstall-packages-from=node
This will first use "nvm version node" to identify the current version you're migrating packages from. Then it resolves the new version to install from the remote server and installs it. Lastly, it runs "nvm reinstall-packages" to reinstall the npm packages from your prior version of Node to the new one.
You can also install and migrate npm packages from specific versions of Node like this:
Note that reinstalling packages explicitly does not update the npm version — this is to ensure that npm isn't accidentally upgraded to a broken version for the new node version.
To update npm at the same time add the --latest-npm flag, like this:
or, you can at any time run the following command to get the latest supported npm version on the current node version:
nvm install-latest-npm
If you've already gotten an error to the effect of "npm does not support Node.js", you'll need to (1) revert to a previous node version (nvm ls & nvm use <your latest _working_ version from the ls>, (2) delete the newly created node version (nvm uninstall <your _broken_ version of node from the ls>), then (3) rerun your nvm install with the --latest-npm flag.
Default Global Packages From File While Installing
If you have a list of default packages you want installed every time you install a new version, we support that too -- just add the package names, one per line, to the file $NVM_DIR/default-packages. You can add anything npm would accept as a package argument on the command line.
If you want to install a new version of io.js and migrate npm packages from a previous version:
nvm install iojs --reinstall-packages-from=iojs
The same guidelines mentioned for migrating npm packages in node are applicable to io.js.
System Version of Node
If you want to use the system-installed version of node, you can use the special default alias "system":
nvm use system
nvm run system --version
Listing Versions
If you want to see what versions are installed:
nvm ls
If you want to see what versions are available to install:
nvm ls-remote
Setting Custom Colors
You can set five colors that will be used to display version and alias information. These colors replace the default colors.
Initial colors are: g b y r e
Color codes:
r/R = red / bold red
g/G = green / bold green
b/B = blue / bold blue
c/C = cyan / bold cyan
m/M = magenta / bold magenta
y/Y = yellow / bold yellow
k/K = black / bold black
e/W = light grey / white
nvm set-colors rgBcm
Persisting custom colors
If you want the custom colors to persist after terminating the shell, export the NVM_COLORS variable in your shell profile. For example, if you want to use cyan, magenta, green, bold red and bold yellow, add the following line:
export NVM_COLORS='cmgRY'
Suppressing colorized output
nvm help (or -h or --help), nvm ls, nvm ls-remote and nvm alias usually produce colorized output. You can disable colors with the --no-colors option (or by setting the environment variable TERM=dumb):
nvm ls --no-colors
nvm help --no-colors
TERM=dumb nvm ls
Restoring PATH
To restore your PATH, you can deactivate it:
nvm deactivate
Set default node version
To set a default Node version to be used in any new shell, use the alias 'default':
nvm alias default node
Use a mirror of node binaries
To use a mirror of the node binaries, set $NVM_NODEJS_ORG_MIRROR:
nvm use will not, by default, create a "current" symlink. Set $NVM_SYMLINK_CURRENT to "true" to enable this behavior, which is sometimes useful for IDEs. Note that using nvm in multiple shell tabs with this environment variable enabled can cause race conditions.
.nvmrc
You can create a .nvmrc file containing a node version number (or any other string that nvm understands; see nvm --help for details) in the project root directory (or any parent directory).
Afterwards, nvm use, nvm install, nvm exec, nvm run, and nvm which will use the version specified in the .nvmrc file if no version is supplied on the command line.
For example, to make nvm default to the latest 5.9 release, the latest LTS version, or the latest node version for the current directory:
$ echo"5.9"> .nvmrc
$ echo"lts/*"> .nvmrc # to default to the latest LTS version
$ echo"node"> .nvmrc # to default to the latest version
[NB these examples assume a POSIX-compliant shell version of echo. If you use a Windows cmd development environment, eg the .nvmrc file is used to configure a remote Linux deployment, then keep in mind the "s will be copied leading to an invalid file. Remove them.]
Then when you run nvm:
$ nvm use
Found '/path/to/project/.nvmrc' with version <5.9>
Now using node v5.9.1 (npm v3.7.3)
nvm use et. al. will traverse directory structure upwards from the current directory looking for the .nvmrc file. In other words, running nvm use et. al. in any subdirectory of a directory with an .nvmrc will result in that .nvmrc being utilized.
The contents of a .nvmrc file must be the <version> (as described by nvm --help) followed by a newline. No trailing spaces are allowed, and the trailing newline is required.
Deeper Shell Integration
You can use avn to deeply integrate into your shell and automatically invoke nvm when changing directories. avn is not supported by the nvm maintainers. Please report issues to the avn team.
If you prefer a lighter-weight solution, the recipes below have been contributed by nvm users. They are not supported by the nvm maintainers. We are, however, accepting pull requests for more examples.
bash
Automatically call nvm use
Put the following at the end of your $HOME/.bashrc:
cdnvm() {
cd"$@";
nvm_path=$(nvm_find_up .nvmrc | tr -d '\n')# If there are no .nvmrc file, use the default nvm versionif [[ !$nvm_path=*[^[:space:]]* ]];thendeclare default_version;
default_version=$(nvm version default);# If there is no default version, set it to `node`# This will use the latest version on your machineif [[ $default_version=="N/A" ]];then
nvm alias default node;
default_version=$(nvm version default);fi# If the current version is not the default version, set it to use the default versionif [[ $(nvm current)!="$default_version" ]];then
nvm use default;fielif [[ -s$nvm_path/.nvmrc &&-r$nvm_path/.nvmrc ]];thendeclare nvm_version
nvm_version=$(<"$nvm_path"/.nvmrc)declare locally_resolved_nvm_version
# `nvm ls` will check all locally-available versions# If there are multiple matching versions, take the latest one# Remove the `->` and `*` characters and spaces# `locally_resolved_nvm_version` will be `N/A` if no local versions are found
locally_resolved_nvm_version=$(nvm ls --no-colors "$nvm_version"| tail -1 | tr -d '\->*'| tr -d '[:space:]')# If it is not already installed, install it# `nvm install` will implicitly use the newly-installed versionif [[ "$locally_resolved_nvm_version"=="N/A" ]];then
nvm install "$nvm_version";elif [[ $(nvm current)!="$locally_resolved_nvm_version" ]];then
nvm use "$nvm_version";fifi
}
alias cd='cdnvm'cd$PWD
This alias would search 'up' from your current directory in order to detect a .nvmrc file. If it finds it, it will switch to that version; if not, it will use the default version.
zsh
Calling nvm use automatically in a directory with a .nvmrc file
Put this into your $HOME/.zshrc to call nvm use automatically whenever you enter a directory that contains an .nvmrc file with a string telling nvm which node to use:
# place this after nvm initialization!
autoload -U add-zsh-hook
load-nvmrc() {
local node_version="$(nvm version)"local nvmrc_path="$(nvm_find_nvmrc)"if [ -n"$nvmrc_path" ];thenlocal nvmrc_node_version=$(nvm version "$(cat "${nvmrc_path}")")if [ "$nvmrc_node_version"="N/A" ];then
nvm install
elif [ "$nvmrc_node_version"!="$node_version" ];then
nvm use
fielif [ "$node_version"!="$(nvm version default)" ];thenecho"Reverting to nvm default version"
nvm use default
fi
}
add-zsh-hook chpwd load-nvmrc
load-nvmrc
fish
Calling nvm use automatically in a directory with a .nvmrc file
# ~/.config/fish/functions/nvm.fishfunction nvm
bass source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh--no-use';' nvm $argvend# ~/.config/fish/functions/nvm_find_nvmrc.fishfunction nvm_find_nvmrc
bass source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh--no-use';' nvm_find_nvmrc
end# ~/.config/fish/functions/load_nvm.fishfunction load_nvm --on-variable="PWD"set-l default_node_version (nvm version default)
set-l node_version (nvm version)
set-l nvmrc_path (nvm_find_nvmrc)
iftest-n"$nvmrc_path"set-l nvmrc_node_version (nvm version (cat$nvmrc_path))
iftest"$nvmrc_node_version" = "N/A"
nvm install (cat$nvmrc_path)
elseiftest nvmrc_node_version != node_version
nvm use $nvmrc_node_versionendelseiftest"$node_version" != "$default_node_version"echo"Reverting to default Node version"
nvm use default
endend# ~/.config/fish/config.fish# You must call it on initialization or listening to directory switching won't work
load_nvm
Running Tests
Tests are written in Urchin. Install Urchin (and other dependencies) like so:
npm install
There are slow tests and fast tests. The slow tests do things like install node
and check that the right versions are used. The fast tests fake this to test
things like aliases and uninstalling. From the root of the nvm git repository,
run the fast tests like this:
npm run test/fast
Run the slow tests like this:
npm run test/slow
Run all of the tests like this:
npm test
Nota bene: Avoid running nvm while the tests are running.
Environment variables
nvm exposes the following environment variables:
NVM_DIR - nvm's installation directory.
NVM_BIN - where node, npm, and global packages for the active version of node are installed.
NVM_INC - node's include file directory (useful for building C/C++ addons for node).
NVM_CD_FLAGS - used to maintain compatibility with zsh.
NVM_RC_VERSION - version from .nvmrc file if being used.
Additionally, nvm modifies PATH, and, if present, MANPATH and NODE_PATH when changing versions.
Put the above sourcing line just below the sourcing line for nvm in your profile (.bashrc, .bash_profile).
Usage
nvm:
$ nvm Tab
alias deactivate install list-remote reinstall-packages uninstall version
cache exec install-latest-npm ls run unload version-remote
current help list ls-remote unalias use which
nvm will encounter some issues if you have some non-default settings set. (see #606)
The following are known to cause issues:
Inside ~/.npmrc:
prefix='some/path'
Environment Variables:
$NPM_CONFIG_PREFIX$PREFIX
Shell settings:
set -e
Installing nvm on Alpine Linux
In order to provide the best performance (and other optimisations), nvm will download and install pre-compiled binaries for Node (and npm) when you run nvm install X. The Node project compiles, tests and hosts/provides these pre-compiled binaries which are built for mainstream/traditional Linux distributions (such as Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, RedHat et al).
Alpine Linux, unlike mainstream/traditional Linux distributions, is based on BusyBox, a very compact (~5MB) Linux distribution. BusyBox (and thus Alpine Linux) uses a different C/C++ stack to most mainstream/traditional Linux distributions - musl. This makes binary programs built for such mainstream/traditional incompatible with Alpine Linux, thus we cannot simply nvm install X on Alpine Linux and expect the downloaded binary to run correctly - you'll likely see "...does not exist" errors if you try that.
There is a -s flag for nvm install which requests nvm download Node source and compile it locally.
If installing nvm on Alpine Linux is still what you want or need to do, you should be able to achieve this by running the following from you Alpine Linux shell:
To make the development and testing work easier, we have a Dockerfile for development usage, which is based on Ubuntu 18.04 base image, prepared with essential and useful tools for nvm development, to build the docker image of the environment, run the docker command at the root of nvm repository:
$ docker build -t nvm-dev .
This will package your current nvm repository with our pre-defined development environment into a docker image named nvm-dev, once it's built with success, validate your image via docker images:
$ docker images
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
nvm-dev latest 9ca4c57a97d8 7 days ago 650 MB
If you got no error message, now you can easily involve in:
$ docker run -h nvm-dev -it nvm-dev
nvm@nvm-dev:~/.nvm$
Please note that it'll take about 8 minutes to build the image and the image size would be about 650MB, so it's not suitable for production usage.
For more information and documentation about docker, please refer to its official website:
If you try to install a node version and the installation fails, be sure to run nvm cache clear to delete cached node downloads, or you might get an error like the following:
curl: (33) HTTP server doesn't seem to support byte ranges. Cannot resume.
After the v0.8.6 release of node, nvm tries to install from binary packages. But in some systems, the official binary packages don't work due to incompatibility of shared libs. In such cases, use -s option to force install from source:
nvm install -s 0.8.6
If setting the default alias does not establish the node version in new shells (i.e. nvm current yields system), ensure that the system's node PATH is set before the nvm.sh source line in your shell profile (see #658)
macOS Troubleshooting
nvm node version not found in vim shell
If you set node version to a version other than your system node version nvm use 6.2.1 and open vim and run :!node -v you should see v6.2.1 if you see your system version v0.12.7. You need to run:
There is one more edge case causing this issue, and that's a mismatch between the $HOME path and the user's home directory's actual name.
You have to make sure that the user directory name in $HOME and the user directory name you'd see from running ls /Users/are capitalized the same way (See this issue).
To change the user directory and/or account name follow the instructions here
Homebrew makes zsh directories unsecure
zsh compinit: insecure directories, run compaudit for list.
Ignore insecure directories and continue [y] or abort compinit [n]? y
Homebrew causes insecure directories like /usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions and /usr/local/share/zsh. This is not an nvm problem - it is a homebrew problem. Refer here for some solutions related to the issue.
Macs with M1 chip
January 2021: there are no pre-compiled NodeJS binaries for versions prior to 15.x for Apple's new M1 chip (arm64 architecture).
Some issues you may encounter:
using nvm to install, say, v14.15.4:
the C code compiles successfully
but crashes with an out of memory error when used
increasing the memory available to node still produces the out of memory errors:
when using nvm to install some versions, the compilation fails
One solution to this issue is to change the architecture of your shell from arm64 to x86.
Let's assume that:
you already have versions 12.20.1 and 14.15.4 installed using nvm
the current version in use is 14.15.4
you are using the zsh shell
you have Rosetta 2 installed (macOS prompts you to install Rosetta 2 the first time you open a Intel-only non-command-line application, or you may install Rosetta 2 from the command line with softwareupdate --install-rosetta)
# Check what version you're running:
$ node --version
v14.15.4
# Check architecture of the `node` binary:
$ node -p process.arch
arm64
# This confirms that the arch is for the M1 chip, which is causing the problems.# So we need to uninstall it.# We can't uninstall the version we are currently using, so switch to another version:
$ nvm install v12.20.1
# Now uninstall the version we want to replace:
$ nvm uninstall v14.15.4
# Launch a new zsh process under the 64-bit X86 architecture:
$ arch -x86_64 zsh
# Install node using nvm. This should download the precompiled x64 binary:
$ nvm install v14.15.4
# Now check that the architecture is correct:
$ node -p process.arch
x64
# It is now safe to return to the arm64 zsh process:
$ exit# We're back to a native shell:
$ arch
arm64
# And the new version is now available to use:
$ nvm use v14.15.4
Now using node v14.15.4 (npm v6.14.10)
Maintainers
Currently, the sole maintainer is @ljharb - more maintainers are quite welcome, and we hope to add folks to the team over time. Governance will be re-evaluated as the project evolves.
Copyright OpenJS Foundation and nvm contributors. All rights reserved. The OpenJS Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of the OpenJS Foundation, please see our Trademark Policy and Trademark List. Node.js is a trademark of Joyent, Inc. and is used with its permission. Trademarks and logos not indicated on the list of OpenJS Foundation trademarks are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.
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changed the title
Node Version Manager - POSIX-compliant bash script to manage multiple active node.js versions
NVM - Node Version Manager - POSIX-compliant bash script to manage multiple active node.js versions
Sep 17, 2021
https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm
Node Version Manager
Table of Contents
nvm use
nvm use
automatically in a directory with a.nvmrc
filenvm use
automatically in a directory with a.nvmrc
fileAbout
nvm is a version manager for node.js, designed to be installed per-user, and invoked per-shell.
nvm
works on any POSIX-compliant shell (sh, dash, ksh, zsh, bash), in particular on these platforms: unix, macOS, and windows WSL.Installing and Updating
Install & Update Script
To install or update nvm, you should run the install script. To do that, you may either download and run the script manually, or use the following cURL or Wget command:
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.38.0/install.sh | bash
wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.38.0/install.sh | bash
Running either of the above commands downloads a script and runs it. The script clones the nvm repository to
~/.nvm
, and attempts to add the source lines from the snippet below to the correct profile file (~/.bash_profile
,~/.zshrc
,~/.profile
, or~/.bashrc
).Additional Notes
If the environment variable
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME
is present, it will place thenvm
files there.You can add
--no-use
to the end of the above script (...nvm.sh --no-use
) to postpone usingnvm
until you manuallyuse
it.You can customize the install source, directory, profile, and version using the
NVM_SOURCE
,NVM_DIR
,PROFILE
, andNODE_VERSION
variables.Eg:
curl ... | NVM_DIR="path/to/nvm"
. Ensure that theNVM_DIR
does not contain a trailing slash.The installer can use
git
,curl
, orwget
to downloadnvm
, whichever is available.Troubleshooting on Linux
On Linux, after running the install script, if you get
nvm: command not found
or see no feedback from your terminal after you typecommand -v nvm
, simply close your current terminal, open a new terminal, and try verifying again.Alternatively, you can run run the following commands for the different shells on the command line:
bash:
source ~/.bashrc
zsh:
source ~/.zshrc
ksh:
. ~/.profile
These should pick up the
nvm
command.Troubleshooting on macOS
Since OS X 10.9,
/usr/bin/git
has been preset by Xcode command line tools, which means we can't properly detect if Git is installed or not. You need to manually install the Xcode command line tools before running the install script, otherwise, it'll fail. (see #1782)If you get
nvm: command not found
after running the install script, one of the following might be the reason:Since macOS 10.15, the default shell is
zsh
and nvm will look for.zshrc
to update, none is installed by default. Create one withtouch ~/.zshrc
and run the install script again.If you use bash, the previous default shell, your system may not have a
.bash_profile
file where the command is set up. Create one withtouch ~/.bash_profile
and run the install script again. Then, runsource ~/.bash_profile
to pick up thenvm
command.You have previously used
bash
, but you havezsh
installed. You need to manually add these lines to~/.zshrc
and run. ~/.zshrc
.You might need to restart your terminal instance or run
. ~/.nvm/nvm.sh
. Restarting your terminal/opening a new tab/window, or running the source command will load the command and the new configuration.If the above didn't help, you might need to restart your terminal instance. Try opening a new tab/window in your terminal and retry.
If the above doesn't fix the problem, you may try the following:
If you use bash, it may be that your
.bash_profile
(or~/.profile
) does not source your~/.bashrc
properly. You could fix this by addingsource ~/<your_profile_file>
to it or follow the next step below.Try adding the snippet from the install section, that finds the correct nvm directory and loads nvm, to your usual profile (
~/.bash_profile
,~/.zshrc
,~/.profile
, or~/.bashrc
).For more information about this issue and possible workarounds, please refer here
Ansible
You can use a task:
Verify Installation
To verify that nvm has been installed, do:
command -v nvm
which should output
nvm
if the installation was successful. Please note thatwhich nvm
will not work, sincenvm
is a sourced shell function, not an executable binary.Important Notes
If you're running a system without prepackaged binary available, which means you're going to install nodejs or io.js from its source code, you need to make sure your system has a C++ compiler. For OS X, Xcode will work, for Debian/Ubuntu based GNU/Linux, the
build-essential
andlibssl-dev
packages work.Note:
nvm
also support Windows in some cases. It should work through WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) depending on the version of WSL. It should also work with GitBash (MSYS) or Cygwin. Otherwise, for Windows, afew alternatives exist, which are neither supported nor developed by us:Note:
nvm
does not support Fish either (see #303). Alternatives exist, which are neither supported nor developed by us:Note: We still have some problems with FreeBSD, because there is no official pre-built binary for FreeBSD, and building from source may need patches; see the issue ticket:
Note: On OS X, if you do not have Xcode installed and you do not wish to download the ~4.3GB file, you can install the
Command Line Tools
. You can check out this blog post on how to just that:Note: On OS X, if you have/had a "system" node installed and want to install modules globally, keep in mind that:
nvm
you do not needsudo
to globally install a module withnpm -g
, so instead of doingsudo npm install -g grunt
, do insteadnpm install -g grunt
~/.npmrc
file, make sure it does not contain anyprefix
settings (which is not compatible withnvm
)nvm
will only be available to your user account (the one used to install nvm). This might cause version mismatches, as other users will be using/usr/local/lib/node_modules/*
VS your user account using~/.nvm/versions/node/vX.X.X/lib/node_modules/*
Homebrew installation is not supported. If you have issues with homebrew-installed
nvm
, pleasebrew uninstall
it, and install it using the instructions below, before filing an issue.Note: If you're using
zsh
you can easily installnvm
as a zsh plugin. Installzsh-nvm
and runnvm upgrade
to upgrade.Note: Git versions before v1.7 may face a problem of cloning
nvm
source from GitHub via https protocol, and there is also different behavior of git before v1.6, and git prior to v1.17.10 can not clone tags, so the minimum required git version is v1.7.10. If you are interested in the problem we mentioned here, please refer to GitHub's HTTPS cloning errors article.Git Install
If you have
git
installed (requires git v1.7.10+):cd ~/
from anywhere thengit clone https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm.git .nvm
cd ~/.nvm
and check out the latest version withgit checkout v0.38.0
nvm
by sourcing it from your shell:. ./nvm.sh
Now add these lines to your
~/.bashrc
,~/.profile
, or~/.zshrc
file to have it automatically sourced upon login:(you may have to add to more than one of the above files)
Manual Install
For a fully manual install, execute the following lines to first clone the
nvm
repository into$HOME/.nvm
, and then loadnvm
:Now add these lines to your
~/.bashrc
,~/.profile
, or~/.zshrc
file to have it automatically sourced upon login:(you may have to add to more than one of the above files)
Manual Upgrade
For manual upgrade with
git
(requires git v1.7.10+):$NVM_DIR
Usage
To download, compile, and install the latest release of node, do this:
nvm install node # "node" is an alias for the latest version
To install a specific version of node:
nvm install 6.14.4 # or 10.10.0, 8.9.1, etc
The first version installed becomes the default. New shells will start with the default version of node (e.g.,
nvm alias default
).You can list available versions using
ls-remote
:And then in any new shell just use the installed version:
Or you can just run it:
Or, you can run any arbitrary command in a subshell with the desired version of node:
nvm exec 4.2 node --version
You can also get the path to the executable to where it was installed:
In place of a version pointer like "0.10" or "5.0" or "4.2.1", you can use the following special default aliases with
nvm install
,nvm use
,nvm run
,nvm exec
,nvm which
, etc:node
: this installs the latest version ofnode
iojs
: this installs the latest version ofio.js
stable
: this alias is deprecated, and only truly applies tonode
v0.12
and earlier. Currently, this is an alias fornode
.unstable
: this alias points tonode
v0.11
- the last "unstable" node release, since post-1.0, all node versions are stable. (in SemVer, versions communicate breakage, not stability).Long-term Support
Node has a schedule for long-term support (LTS) You can reference LTS versions in aliases and
.nvmrc
files with the notationlts/*
for the latest LTS, andlts/argon
for LTS releases from the "argon" line, for example. In addition, the following commands support LTS arguments:nvm install --lts
/nvm install --lts=argon
/nvm install 'lts/*'
/nvm install lts/argon
nvm uninstall --lts
/nvm uninstall --lts=argon
/nvm uninstall 'lts/*'
/nvm uninstall lts/argon
nvm use --lts
/nvm use --lts=argon
/nvm use 'lts/*'
/nvm use lts/argon
nvm exec --lts
/nvm exec --lts=argon
/nvm exec 'lts/*'
/nvm exec lts/argon
nvm run --lts
/nvm run --lts=argon
/nvm run 'lts/*'
/nvm run lts/argon
nvm ls-remote --lts
/nvm ls-remote --lts=argon
nvm ls-remote 'lts/*'
/nvm ls-remote lts/argon
nvm version-remote --lts
/nvm version-remote --lts=argon
/nvm version-remote 'lts/*'
/nvm version-remote lts/argon
Any time your local copy of
nvm
connects to https://nodejs.org, it will re-create the appropriate local aliases for all available LTS lines. These aliases (stored under$NVM_DIR/alias/lts
), are managed bynvm
, and you should not modify, remove, or create these files - expect your changes to be undone, and expect meddling with these files to cause bugs that will likely not be supported.To get the latest LTS version of node and migrate your existing installed packages, use
nvm install 'lts/*' --reinstall-packages-from=current
Migrating Global Packages While Installing
If you want to install a new version of Node.js and migrate npm packages from a previous version:
This will first use "nvm version node" to identify the current version you're migrating packages from. Then it resolves the new version to install from the remote server and installs it. Lastly, it runs "nvm reinstall-packages" to reinstall the npm packages from your prior version of Node to the new one.
You can also install and migrate npm packages from specific versions of Node like this:
Note that reinstalling packages explicitly does not update the npm version — this is to ensure that npm isn't accidentally upgraded to a broken version for the new node version.
To update npm at the same time add the
--latest-npm
flag, like this:nvm install 'lts/*' --reinstall-packages-from=default --latest-npm
or, you can at any time run the following command to get the latest supported npm version on the current node version:
If you've already gotten an error to the effect of "npm does not support Node.js", you'll need to (1) revert to a previous node version (
nvm ls
&nvm use <your latest _working_ version from the ls>
, (2) delete the newly created node version (nvm uninstall <your _broken_ version of node from the ls>
), then (3) rerun yournvm install
with the--latest-npm
flag.Default Global Packages From File While Installing
If you have a list of default packages you want installed every time you install a new version, we support that too -- just add the package names, one per line, to the file
$NVM_DIR/default-packages
. You can add anything npm would accept as a package argument on the command line.io.js
If you want to install io.js:
If you want to install a new version of io.js and migrate npm packages from a previous version:
The same guidelines mentioned for migrating npm packages in node are applicable to io.js.
System Version of Node
If you want to use the system-installed version of node, you can use the special default alias "system":
Listing Versions
If you want to see what versions are installed:
If you want to see what versions are available to install:
Setting Custom Colors
You can set five colors that will be used to display version and alias information. These colors replace the default colors.
Initial colors are: g b y r e
Color codes:
Persisting custom colors
If you want the custom colors to persist after terminating the shell, export the NVM_COLORS variable in your shell profile. For example, if you want to use cyan, magenta, green, bold red and bold yellow, add the following line:
Suppressing colorized output
nvm help (or -h or --help)
,nvm ls
,nvm ls-remote
andnvm alias
usually produce colorized output. You can disable colors with the--no-colors
option (or by setting the environment variableTERM=dumb
):nvm ls --no-colors nvm help --no-colors TERM=dumb nvm ls
Restoring PATH
To restore your PATH, you can deactivate it:
Set default node version
To set a default Node version to be used in any new shell, use the alias 'default':
nvm alias default node
Use a mirror of node binaries
To use a mirror of the node binaries, set
$NVM_NODEJS_ORG_MIRROR
:export NVM_NODEJS_ORG_MIRROR=https://nodejs.org/dist nvm install node NVM_NODEJS_ORG_MIRROR=https://nodejs.org/dist nvm install 4.2
To use a mirror of the io.js binaries, set
$NVM_IOJS_ORG_MIRROR
:export NVM_IOJS_ORG_MIRROR=https://iojs.org/dist nvm install iojs-v1.0.3 NVM_IOJS_ORG_MIRROR=https://iojs.org/dist nvm install iojs-v1.0.3
nvm use
will not, by default, create a "current" symlink. Set$NVM_SYMLINK_CURRENT
to "true" to enable this behavior, which is sometimes useful for IDEs. Note that usingnvm
in multiple shell tabs with this environment variable enabled can cause race conditions..nvmrc
You can create a
.nvmrc
file containing a node version number (or any other string thatnvm
understands; seenvm --help
for details) in the project root directory (or any parent directory).Afterwards,
nvm use
,nvm install
,nvm exec
,nvm run
, andnvm which
will use the version specified in the.nvmrc
file if no version is supplied on the command line.For example, to make nvm default to the latest 5.9 release, the latest LTS version, or the latest node version for the current directory:
[NB these examples assume a POSIX-compliant shell version of
echo
. If you use a Windowscmd
development environment, eg the.nvmrc
file is used to configure a remote Linux deployment, then keep in mind the"
s will be copied leading to an invalid file. Remove them.]Then when you run nvm:
nvm use
et. al. will traverse directory structure upwards from the current directory looking for the.nvmrc
file. In other words, runningnvm use
et. al. in any subdirectory of a directory with an.nvmrc
will result in that.nvmrc
being utilized.The contents of a
.nvmrc
file must be the<version>
(as described bynvm --help
) followed by a newline. No trailing spaces are allowed, and the trailing newline is required.Deeper Shell Integration
You can use
avn
to deeply integrate into your shell and automatically invokenvm
when changing directories.avn
is not supported by thenvm
maintainers. Please report issues to theavn
team.If you prefer a lighter-weight solution, the recipes below have been contributed by
nvm
users. They are not supported by thenvm
maintainers. We are, however, accepting pull requests for more examples.bash
Automatically call
nvm use
Put the following at the end of your
$HOME/.bashrc
:This alias would search 'up' from your current directory in order to detect a
.nvmrc
file. If it finds it, it will switch to that version; if not, it will use the default version.zsh
Calling
nvm use
automatically in a directory with a.nvmrc
filePut this into your
$HOME/.zshrc
to callnvm use
automatically whenever you enter a directory that contains an.nvmrc
file with a string telling nvm which node touse
:fish
Calling
nvm use
automatically in a directory with a.nvmrc
fileThis requires that you have bass installed.
Running Tests
Tests are written in Urchin. Install Urchin (and other dependencies) like so:
There are slow tests and fast tests. The slow tests do things like install node
and check that the right versions are used. The fast tests fake this to test
things like aliases and uninstalling. From the root of the nvm git repository,
run the fast tests like this:
Run the slow tests like this:
Run all of the tests like this:
Nota bene: Avoid running nvm while the tests are running.
Environment variables
nvm exposes the following environment variables:
NVM_DIR
- nvm's installation directory.NVM_BIN
- where node, npm, and global packages for the active version of node are installed.NVM_INC
- node's include file directory (useful for building C/C++ addons for node).NVM_CD_FLAGS
- used to maintain compatibility with zsh.NVM_RC_VERSION
- version from .nvmrc file if being used.Additionally, nvm modifies
PATH
, and, if present,MANPATH
andNODE_PATH
when changing versions.Bash Completion
To activate, you need to source
bash_completion
:Put the above sourcing line just below the sourcing line for nvm in your profile (
.bashrc
,.bash_profile
).Usage
nvm:
nvm alias:
nvm use:
nvm uninstall:
Compatibility Issues
nvm
will encounter some issues if you have some non-default settings set. (see #606)The following are known to cause issues:
Inside
~/.npmrc
:prefix='some/path'
Environment Variables:
Shell settings:
set -e
Installing nvm on Alpine Linux
In order to provide the best performance (and other optimisations), nvm will download and install pre-compiled binaries for Node (and npm) when you run
nvm install X
. The Node project compiles, tests and hosts/provides these pre-compiled binaries which are built for mainstream/traditional Linux distributions (such as Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, RedHat et al).Alpine Linux, unlike mainstream/traditional Linux distributions, is based on BusyBox, a very compact (~5MB) Linux distribution. BusyBox (and thus Alpine Linux) uses a different C/C++ stack to most mainstream/traditional Linux distributions - musl. This makes binary programs built for such mainstream/traditional incompatible with Alpine Linux, thus we cannot simply
nvm install X
on Alpine Linux and expect the downloaded binary to run correctly - you'll likely see "...does not exist" errors if you try that.There is a
-s
flag fornvm install
which requests nvm download Node source and compile it locally.If installing nvm on Alpine Linux is still what you want or need to do, you should be able to achieve this by running the following from you Alpine Linux shell:
apk add -U curl bash ca-certificates openssl ncurses coreutils python2 make gcc g++ libgcc linux-headers grep util-linux binutils findutils curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.38.0/install.sh | bash
The Node project has some desire but no concrete plans (due to the overheads of building, testing and support) to offer Alpine-compatible binaries.
As a potential alternative, @mhart (a Node contributor) has some Docker images for Alpine Linux with Node and optionally, npm, pre-installed.
Uninstalling / Removal
Manual Uninstall
To remove
nvm
manually, execute the following:$ rm -rf "$NVM_DIR"
Edit
~/.bashrc
(or other shell resource config) and remove the lines below:Docker For Development Environment
To make the development and testing work easier, we have a Dockerfile for development usage, which is based on Ubuntu 18.04 base image, prepared with essential and useful tools for
nvm
development, to build the docker image of the environment, run the docker command at the root ofnvm
repository:$ docker build -t nvm-dev .
This will package your current nvm repository with our pre-defined development environment into a docker image named
nvm-dev
, once it's built with success, validate your image viadocker images
:If you got no error message, now you can easily involve in:
$ docker run -h nvm-dev -it nvm-dev nvm@nvm-dev:~/.nvm$
Please note that it'll take about 8 minutes to build the image and the image size would be about 650MB, so it's not suitable for production usage.
For more information and documentation about docker, please refer to its official website:
Problems
If you try to install a node version and the installation fails, be sure to run
nvm cache clear
to delete cached node downloads, or you might get an error like the following:curl: (33) HTTP server doesn't seem to support byte ranges. Cannot resume.
Where's my
sudo node
? Check out #43After the v0.8.6 release of node, nvm tries to install from binary packages. But in some systems, the official binary packages don't work due to incompatibility of shared libs. In such cases, use
-s
option to force install from source:default
alias does not establish the node version in new shells (i.e.nvm current
yieldssystem
), ensure that the system's nodePATH
is set before thenvm.sh
source line in your shell profile (see #658)macOS Troubleshooting
nvm node version not found in vim shell
If you set node version to a version other than your system node version
nvm use 6.2.1
and open vim and run:!node -v
you should seev6.2.1
if you see your system versionv0.12.7
. You need to run:More on this issue in dotphiles/dotzsh.
nvm is not compatible with the npm config "prefix" option
Some solutions for this issue can be found here
There is one more edge case causing this issue, and that's a mismatch between the
$HOME
path and the user's home directory's actual name.You have to make sure that the user directory name in
$HOME
and the user directory name you'd see from runningls /Users/
are capitalized the same way (See this issue).To change the user directory and/or account name follow the instructions here
Homebrew makes zsh directories unsecure
Homebrew causes insecure directories like
/usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions
and/usr/local/share/zsh
. This is not annvm
problem - it is a homebrew problem. Refer here for some solutions related to the issue.Macs with M1 chip
January 2021: there are no pre-compiled NodeJS binaries for versions prior to 15.x for Apple's new M1 chip (arm64 architecture).
Some issues you may encounter:
nvm
to install, say,v14.15.4
:$ NODE_OPTIONS="--max-old-space-size=4096" ./node_modules/.bin/your_node_package
nvm
to install some versions, the compilation failsOne solution to this issue is to change the architecture of your shell from arm64 to x86.
Let's assume that:
12.20.1
and14.15.4
installed usingnvm
14.15.4
zsh
shellsoftwareupdate --install-rosetta
)Maintainers
Currently, the sole maintainer is @ljharb - more maintainers are quite welcome, and we hope to add folks to the team over time. Governance will be re-evaluated as the project evolves.
License
See LICENSE.md.
Copyright notice
Copyright OpenJS Foundation and
nvm
contributors. All rights reserved. The OpenJS Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of the OpenJS Foundation, please see our Trademark Policy and Trademark List. Node.js is a trademark of Joyent, Inc. and is used with its permission. Trademarks and logos not indicated on the list of OpenJS Foundation trademarks are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.The OpenJS Foundation | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | OpenJS Foundation Bylaws | Trademark Policy | Trademark List | Cookie Policy
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