Use nodenv to pick a Node version for your application and guarantee that your development environment matches production. Put nodenv to work with npm for painless Node upgrades and bulletproof deployments.
Powerful in development. Specify your app's Node version once, in a single file. Keep all your teammates on the same page. No headaches running apps on different versions of Node. Just Works™ from the command line. Override the Node version anytime: just set an environment variable.
Rock-solid in production. Your application's executables are its
interface with ops. With nodenv and you'll never again need to cd
in a cron job or Chef recipe to ensure you've selected the right runtime.
The Node version dependency lives in one place—your app—so upgrades and
rollbacks are atomic, even when you switch versions.
One thing well. nodenv is concerned solely with switching Node versions. It's simple and predictable. A rich plugin ecosystem lets you tailor it to suit your needs. Compile your own Node versions, or use the node-build plugin to automate the process. Specify per-application environment variables with nodenv-vars. See more plugins on the wiki.
At a high level, nodenv intercepts Node commands using shim
executables injected into your PATH
, determines which Node version
has been specified by your application, and passes your commands along
to the correct Node installation.
When you run a command like node
or npm
, your operating system
searches through a list of directories to find an executable file with
that name. This list of directories lives in an environment variable
called PATH
, with each directory in the list separated by a colon:
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
Directories in PATH
are searched from left to right, so a matching
executable in a directory at the beginning of the list takes
precedence over another one at the end. In this example, the
/usr/local/bin
directory will be searched first, then /usr/bin
,
then /bin
.
nodenv works by inserting a directory of shims at the front of your
PATH
:
~/.nodenv/shims:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
Through a process called rehashing, nodenv maintains shims in that
directory to match every Node command across every installed version
of Node—node
, npm
, and so on.
Shims are lightweight executables that simply pass your command along
to nodenv. So with nodenv installed, when you run, say, npm
, your
operating system will do the following:
- Search your
PATH
for an executable file namednpm
- Find the nodenv shim named
npm
at the beginning of yourPATH
- Run the shim named
npm
, which in turn passes the command along to nodenv
When you execute a shim, nodenv determines which Node version to use by reading it from the following sources, in this order:
-
The
NODENV_VERSION
environment variable, if specified. You can use thenodenv shell
command to set this environment variable in your current shell session. -
The first
.node-version
file found by searching the directory of the script you are executing and each of its parent directories until reaching the root of your filesystem. -
The first
.node-version
file found by searching the current working directory and each of its parent directories until reaching the root of your filesystem. You can modify the.node-version
file in the current working directory with thenodenv local
command. -
The global
~/.nodenv/version
file. You can modify this file using thenodenv global
command. If the global version file is not present, nodenv assumes you want to use the "system" Node—i.e. whatever version would be run if nodenv weren't in your path.
Once nodenv has determined which version of Node your application has specified, it passes the command along to the corresponding Node installation.
Each Node version is installed into its own directory under
~/.nodenv/versions
. For example, you might have these versions
installed:
~/.nodenv/versions/0.10.36/
~/.nodenv/versions/0.12.0/
~/.nodenv/versions/iojs-1.0.0/
Version names to nodenv are simply the names of the directories in
~/.nodenv/versions
.
If you're on Mac OS X, consider installing with Homebrew.
This will get you going with the latest version of nodenv and make it easy to fork and contribute any changes back upstream.
-
Check out nodenv into
~/.nodenv
.$ git clone https://github.com/nodenv/nodenv.git ~/.nodenv
Optionally, try to compile dynamic bash extension to speed up nodenv. Don't worry if it fails; nodenv will still work normally:
$ cd ~/.nodenv && src/configure && make -C src
-
Add
~/.nodenv/bin
to your$PATH
for access to thenodenv
command-line utility.$ echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.nodenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile
Ubuntu Desktop note: Modify your
~/.bashrc
instead of~/.bash_profile
.Zsh note: Modify your
~/.zshrc
file instead of~/.bash_profile
. -
Run
~/.nodenv/bin/nodenv init
for shell-specific instructions on how to initialize nodenv to enable shims and autocompletion. -
Restart your shell so that PATH changes take effect. (Opening a new terminal tab will usually do it.) Now check if nodenv was set up:
$ type nodenv #=> "nodenv is a function"
-
(Optional) Install node-build, which provides the
nodenv install
command that simplifies the process of installing new Node versions.
As an alternative to installation via GitHub checkout, you can install nodenv and node-build using the Homebrew package manager on Mac OS X:
$ brew update
$ brew install nodenv
$ nodenv init
Note: node-build is installed with nodenv by default. To skip
node-build, pass --without-node-build
.
You'll only ever have to run nodenv init
once.
If you've installed nodenv manually using git, you can upgrade your installation to the cutting-edge version at any time.
$ cd ~/.nodenv
$ git pull
To use a specific release of nodenv, check out the corresponding tag:
$ cd ~/.nodenv
$ git fetch
$ git checkout v0.3.0
Alternatively, check out the nodenv-update plugin which provides a command to update nodenv as well as all installed plugins.
$ nodenv update
If you've installed via Homebrew, then upgrade
via its brew
command:
$ brew update
$ brew upgrade nodenv node-build
Skip this section unless you must know what every line in your shell profile is doing.
nodenv init
is the only command that crosses the line of loading
extra commands into your shell. Here's what nodenv init
actually does:
-
Sets up your shims path. This is the only requirement for nodenv to function properly. You can do this by hand by prepending
~/.nodenv/shims
to your$PATH
. -
Installs autocompletion. This is entirely optional but pretty useful. Sourcing
~/.nodenv/completions/nodenv.bash
will set that up. There is also a~/.nodenv/completions/nodenv.zsh
for Zsh users. -
Rehashes shims. From time to time you'll need to rebuild your shim files. Doing this automatically makes sure everything is up to date. You can always run
nodenv rehash
manually. -
Installs the sh dispatcher. This bit is also optional, but allows nodenv and plugins to change variables in your current shell, making commands like
nodenv shell
possible. The sh dispatcher doesn't do anything crazy like overridecd
or hack your shell prompt, but if for some reason you neednodenv
to be a real script rather than a shell function, you can safely skip it.
Run nodenv init -
for yourself to see exactly what happens under the
hood.
The nodenv install
command doesn't ship with nodenv out of the box, but is
provided by the node-build project. If you installed it as part of GitHub
checkout process outlined above you should be able to:
# list all available versions:
$ nodenv install -l
# install a Node version:
$ nodenv install 0.10.26
Alternatively to the install
command, you can download and compile
Node manually as a subdirectory of ~/.nodenv/versions/
. An entry in
that directory can also be a symlink to a Node version installed
elsewhere on the filesystem. nodenv doesn't care; it will simply treat
any entry in the versions/
directory as a separate Node version.
As time goes on, Node versions you install will accumulate in your
~/.nodenv/versions
directory.
To remove old Node versions, simply rm -rf
the directory of the
version you want to remove. You can find the directory of a particular
Node version with the nodenv prefix
command, e.g. nodenv prefix 0.8.22
.
The node-build plugin provides an nodenv uninstall
command to
automate the removal process.
The simplicity of nodenv makes it easy to temporarily disable it, or uninstall from the system.
- To disable nodenv managing your Node versions, simply remove the
nodenv init
line from your shell startup configuration. This will remove nodenv shims directory from$PATH
, and future invocations likenode
will execute the system Node version, as before nodenv.
nodenv
will still be accessible on the command line, but your Node
apps won't be affected by version switching.
-
To completely uninstall nodenv, perform step (1) and then remove its root directory. This will delete all Node versions that were installed under
`nodenv root`/versions/
directory:rm -rf `nodenv root`
If you've installed nodenv using a package manager, as a final step perform the nodenv package removal. For instance, for Homebrew:
brew uninstall nodenv
Like git
, the nodenv
command delegates to subcommands based on its
first argument. The most common subcommands are:
Sets a local application-specific Node version by writing the version
name to a .node-version
file in the current directory. This version
overrides the global version, and can be overridden itself by setting
the NODENV_VERSION
environment variable or with the nodenv shell
command.
$ nodenv local 0.10.0
When run without a version number, nodenv local
reports the currently
configured local version. You can also unset the local version:
$ nodenv local --unset
Sets the global version of Node to be used in all shells by writing
the version name to the ~/.nodenv/version
file. This version can be
overridden by an application-specific .node-version
file, or by
setting the NODENV_VERSION
environment variable.
$ nodenv global 0.10.26
The special version name system
tells nodenv to use the system Node
(detected by searching your $PATH
).
When run without a version number, nodenv global
reports the
currently configured global version.
Sets a shell-specific Node version by setting the NODENV_VERSION
environment variable in your shell. This version overrides
application-specific versions and the global version.
$ nodenv shell 0.11.11
When run without a version number, nodenv shell
reports the current
value of NODENV_VERSION
. You can also unset the shell version:
$ nodenv shell --unset
Note that you'll need nodenv's shell integration enabled (step 3 of
the installation instructions) in order to use this command. If you
prefer not to use shell integration, you may simply set the
NODENV_VERSION
variable yourself:
$ export NODENV_VERSION=0.10.26
Lists all Node versions known to nodenv, and shows an asterisk next to the currently active version.
$ nodenv versions
0.8.22
0.9.12
* 0.10.0 (set by /Users/will/.nodenv/version)
Displays the currently active Node version, along with information on how it was set.
$ nodenv version
0.10.0 (set by /Users/OiNutter/.nodenv/version)
Installs shims for all Node executables known to nodenv (i.e.,
~/.nodenv/versions/*/bin/*
). Run this command after you install a new
version of Node, or install an npm package that provides an executable binary.
$ nodenv rehash
note: the package-rehash plugin automatically runs nodenv rehash
whenever an npm package is installed globally
Displays the full path to the executable that nodenv will invoke when you run the given command.
$ nodenv which npm
/Users/will/.nodenv/versions/0.10.26/bin/npm
Lists all Node versions with the given command installed.
$ nodenv whence npm
0.10.0
0.9.12
0.8.22
You can affect how nodenv operates with the following settings:
name | default | description |
---|---|---|
NODENV_VERSION |
Specifies the Node version to be used. Also see nodenv shell |
|
NODENV_ROOT |
~/.nodenv |
Defines the directory under which Node versions and shims reside. Also see nodenv root |
NODENV_DEBUG |
Outputs debug information. Also as: nodenv --debug <subcommand> |
|
NODENV_HOOK_PATH |
see wiki | Colon-separated list of paths searched for nodenv hooks. |
NODENV_DIR |
$PWD |
Directory to start searching for .node-version files. |
The nodenv source code is hosted on GitHub. It's clean, modular, and easy to understand, even if you're not a shell hacker.
Tests are executed using Bats:
$ bats test
$ bats test/<file>.bats
Please feel free to submit pull requests and file bugs on the issue tracker.
Forked from Sam Stephenson's rbenv by Will McKenzie and modified for node.