nvm

References

• nvm Repository

Notes

nvm allows you to quickly install and use different versions of node via the command line. 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, in particular on these platforms: unix, macOS, and windows WSL.

$ nvm use 16
Now using node v16.9.1 (npm v7.21.1)
$ node -v
v16.9.1
$ nvm use 14
Now using node v14.18.0 (npm v6.14.15)
$ node -v
v14.18.0
$ nvm install 12
Now using node v12.22.6 (npm v6.14.5)
$ node -v
v12.22.6

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/v0.40.1/install.sh | bash
 $ wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.1/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.

To verify that nvm has installed, do:

$ command -v nvm

which should output nvm if installed successfully. which nvm will not work, since nvm is a sourced shell function, not an executable binary. You need to make sure your system has a C++ compiler before installing nvm.

For windows, you can run nvm through windows subsystem for Linux or by installing nvm-windows.

Usage

To download and install the latest version of node, do this:

$ nvm install node # "node" is an alias for the latest version

To install a specific version of node:

$ nvm install 14.7.0 # or any version

List available versions:

$ nvm ls-remote