Ask EchoJS: What Node.js version manager to use?

5 up and 0 down, posted by FooBarWidget 4150 days ago 4 comments

FooBarWidget 4150 days ago.

Hi Echo JS, I'm new to this community but my experience with Node is fairly limited, so I hope you don't mind me asking questions so soon. I've noticed that my apps tend to break often because of Node changes. I also happen to be developing a Node application server which must obviously be compatible with multiple Node versions. So I want to test my code against multiple Node versions, but running './configure --prefix=/node/version && make' and messing with $PATH dozens of times seems suboptimal to me. I come from a Ruby background where we have all sorts of tools for managing multiple Ruby versions. I see that Node has that too - a Google search gave me nvm, nodist and n. Which one is recommended? Which one is most popular? Does the Node community recommend using a version manager at all?

irickt 4150 days ago. link 2 points ▲ ▼

Another choice is nave by isaacs, the director of node.js development. https://npmjs.org/package/nave

pid 4150 days ago. link 2 points ▲ ▼

https://npmjs.org/package/n || https://github.com/visionmedia/n
312	downloads in the last day
2 269	downloads in the last week
16 724	downloads in the last month

https://npmjs.org/package/nvm  this stats aren't fair to compare with 'n', read above
30	downloads in the last day
150	downloads in the last week
691	downloads in the last month

https://npmjs.org/package/nodist
1	downloads in the last day
33	downloads in the last week
79	downloads in the last month

attention with 'nvm', because the repository linked in the npm registry is https://github.com/brianloveswords/nvm but there aren't any updates long time, it's a fork from https://github.com/creationix/nvm and there the development takes place !!

If you compare creationix/nvm with visionmedia/n on github, the winner is creationix/nvm
... but I'm using 'n' ;-) but this isn't really a recommendation, because don't need it all the time and never checked if 'n' is better than 'nvm' or vice versa.

pid 4147 days ago. link 1 point ▲ ▼

Now I can recommend https://github.com/creationix/nvm
"n" works fine on my OSX, but it installs binary files, nvm  compiles nodejs, that works better on i.e. Linux etc....  "n" failed ;-)

olalonde 4149 days ago. link 1 point ▲ ▼

If your project is open source, you can also use Travis-CI for testing your code against multiple versions of node. There are also services for non open source projects. https://travis-ci.org/