nodever

A minimalistic node version manager.

Features

Per user or per project defaults.
Wrappers around node & npm commands.
Doesn't poison bash or any other shell.
Works w/ any node/iojs versions.
Über fast.

Requirements

Linux
Go 1.17.1

Overview

nodever doesn't know how to install any of node/iojs versions. You either grab binaries or compile node by yourself & place the result under 1 directory, say /opt/s. For example:

$ ls -1d /opt/s/{node,iojs}*
/opt/s/iojs-v1.1.0-linux-ia32
/opt/s/node-v0.10.35-linux-x86
/opt/s/node-v0.12.0-linux-x86

After installing nodever, you'll get wrappers for node/npm/npx/corepack binaries. Those wrappers check 2 places for instructions:

NODEVER env variable
.nodever.json file

The search for the .nodever.json begins form the current directory (not the directory of a .js file), then switches to its parent & all the way down to /. This allows us to have ~/.nodever.json file w/ a default settings for a particular user & a completely different configuration for ~/some/project.

Installation

$ git clone https://github.com/gromnitsky/nodever
$ cd nodever
$ go install ./...

Yes, ./... is required verbatim. You may also remove the cloned dir afterwards.

Setup

In ~/go/bin you'll find 5 new executables:

corepack
node
nodever
npm
npx

Run nodever for the first time:

$ nodever
nodever error: cannot find node; rerun w/ '-v 1' argument; \
	for help see https://github.com/gromnitsky/nodever

This means no configuration was found. Type:

$ nodever -u init

Which should not raise an error. Now

$ cat ~/.nodever.json
{"Dir":"/opt/s","Def":"SET ME"}

Means that you must manually set "Dir" to a directory where different node versions are installed. (Don't touch "Def".)

$ nodever list
(/home/alex/.nodever.json)
  iojs-v1.1.0-linux-ia32
  node-v0.10.35-linux-x86
  node-v0.12.0-linux-x86

Gives the source of the configuration & all available installations. To select node 0.12.0 type:

$ nodever use 0.12

Which again should not raise an error. Now

$ nodever list
(/home/alex/.nodever.json)
  iojs-v1.1.0-linux-ia32
  node-v0.10.35-linux-x86
* node-v0.12.0-linux-x86

Shows that node-v0.12.0-linux-x86 is indeed a default. The same info can be viewed by

$ nodever
node-v0.12.0-linux-x86 (/home/alex/.nodever.json)

Finally, the most interesting part:

$ node -v
v0.12.0

What was that? The node wrapper (~/go/node) found $HOME/.nodever.json file & executed a /opt/s/node-v0.12.0-linux-x86/bin/node binary w/ -v option. The wrapper passed all CL options directly to the 'wrapped' command. It connected its stdin/stdout/stderr to the corresponding streams of the wrapped binary & it returned the exit code from the wrapped binary, so everything worked just as if you run the real node executable directly.

Shell scripts

There is no need to modify or create .nodever.json files if you want select a node version inside a shell script. Use NODEVER env variable for that. For example:

$ cat my-script.sh
#!/bin/sh
export NODEVER='{"Dir":"/opt/s","Def":"iojs-v1.1.0-linux-ia32"}'
node -v

$ ./my-script.sh
v1.1.0

Hints

You can run an arbitrary command in a subshell with the desired node version:

$ nodever exec 0.10 coffee
coffee> process.version
'v0.10.36'

$ nodever exec iojs npm -v
2.5.1

NPM

One annoyance you'll get is a weird path for globally installed packages.

Suppose we set 0.10 as a default, chose /opt/s as the node umbrella directory & we expect global packages to be installed in /opt/lib. But

# npm ls --depth=0 -g
/opt/s/node-v0.10.35-linux-x86/lib
└── npm@1.4.28

Huh? It turns out, npm uses a prefix for modules path that depends on process.execPath, which in our case is /opt/s/node-v0.10.35-linux-x86/bin/node. So that

# node
> path.dirname(path.dirname(process.execPath))
'/opt/s/node-v0.10.35-linux-x86'

To fix it we may create a global npm config

# cat /etc/npmrc
prefix = /opt

& force npm to read it by exporting npm_config_globalconfig env variable.

# export npm_config_globalconfig=/etc/npmrc
# npm ls --depth=0 -g
/opt/lib
├── ...
└── ...

Bugs

Tested on Fedora only.
Probably won't work under Windows.

License

MIT.

gromnitsky / nodever