Repository files navigation

Node.js version management: no subshells, no profile setup, no convoluted API, justsimple.

• n – Interactively Manage Your Node.js Versions
  • Supported Platforms
  • Installation
    • Third Party Installers
    • Replacing a previous node install
  • Installing Node.js Versions
  • Specifying Node.js Versions
  • Removing Versions
  • Using Downloaded Node.js Versions Without Reinstalling
  • Preserving npm
  • Miscellaneous
  • Custom Mirror
  • Custom Architecture
  • Optional Environment Variables
  • How It Works

n is supported on macOS, Linux, including with Windows Subsystem for Linux, and various other unix-like systems.It is written as a BASH script but does not require you to use BASH as your command shell.

n does not work in native shells on Microsoft Windows (like PowerShell), or Git for Windows BASH, or with the Cygwin DLL.

If you already have Node.js installed, an easy way to installn is usingnpm:

npm install -g n

The default root location used when runningn is/usr/local where a normal user does not have write permission. You may strike the same sort of permission error when using npm to install global modules, like the above command. You have three main options:

1. change the ownership of the relevant directories to yourself (see below)
2. telln to use a custom location where you do have write permissions (seeN_PREFIX)
3. putsudo in front of the command to run it as super user

n caches Node.js versions in subdirectoryn/versions. Theactive Node.js version is installed in subdirectoriesbin,include,lib, andshare.

To take ownership of the system directories (option 1):

# make cache folder (if missing) and take ownershipsudo mkdir -p /usr/local/nsudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/n# make sure the required folders exist (safe to execute even if they already exist)sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin /usr/local/lib /usr/local/include /usr/local/share# take ownership of Node.js install destination folderssudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/bin /usr/local/lib /usr/local/include /usr/local/share

Ifnpm is not yet available, one way to bootstrap an install is to download and runn directly. To install thelts version of Node.js:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tj/n/master/bin/n | bash -s install lts# If you want n installed, you can use npm now.npm install -g n

If you don't need support for updates ton itself you can just save the download:

curl -fsSL -o /usr/local/bin/n https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tj/n/master/bin/n chmod 0755 /usr/local/bin/nn install lts

On macOS withHomebrew you can install then formula.

brew install n

Or on macOS withMacPorts you can install then port:

port install n

On Linux and macOS,n-install allows installation directly from GitHub; for instance:

curl -L https://bit.ly/n-install | bash

n-install sets bothPREFIX andN_PREFIX to$HOME/n, installsn to$HOME/n/bin, modifies the initialization files of supported shells to exportN_PREFIX and add$HOME/n/bin to thePATH, and installs the latest LTS Node.js version.

As a result, bothn itself and all Node.js versions it manages are hosted inside a single, optionally configurable directory, which you can later remove with the includedn-uninstall script.n-update updatesn itself to the latest version. See then-install repo for more details.

Changing from a previous Node.js installed to a different location may involve a few extra steps. See docs forchanging node location for a walk-through example of switching from using Homebrew to usingn to manage Node.js.

You have a problem with multiple versions if after installing node you see the "installed" and "active" locations are different:

%n lts     copying : node/20.12.2   installed : v20.12.2 to /usr/local/bin/node      active : v21.7.3 at /opt/homebrew/bin/node

Simply executen <version> to download and install a version of Node.js. If<version> has already been downloaded,n will install from its cache.

n 10.16.0n lts

Executen on its own to view your downloaded versions, and install the selected version.

$ n  node/4.9.1ο node/8.11.3  node/10.15.0Use up/down arrow keys to select a version, return key to install, d to delete, q to quit

(You can also usej andk to select next or previous version instead of using arrows, orctrl+n andctrl+p.)

If the active node version does not change after install, try opening a new shell in case seeing a stale version.

There are a variety of ways of specifying the target Node.js version forn commands. Most commands use the latest matching version, andn ls-remote lists multiple matching versions.

Numeric version numbers can be complete or incomplete, with an optional leadingv.

• 4.9.1
• 8: 8.x.y versions
• v6.1: 6.1.x versions

There are labels for two especially useful versions:

• lts: newest Long Term Support official release
• latest,current: newest official release

There is anauto label to read the target version from a file in the current directory, or any parent directory.n looks for in order:

• .n-node-version: version on single line. Custom ton.
• .node-version: version on single line. Used by multiple tools:node-version-usage
• .nvmrc: version on single line. Used bynvm.
• if no version file found, look forengine as below.

Theengine label looks for apackage.json file and reads theengines field to determine compatible Node.js. Requires an installed version ofjq ornode, and usesnpx semver to resolve complex ranges.

There is support for the named release streams:

• argon,boron,carbon: codenames for LTS release streams

These Node.js support aliases may be used, although simply resolve to the latest matching version:

• active,lts_active,lts_latest,lts,current,supported

The last version form is for specifyingother releases available using the name of the remote download folder optionally followed by the complete or incomplete version.

• nightly
• test/v11.0.0-test20180528
• rc/10

Remove some cached versions:

n rm 0.9.4 v0.10.0

Removing all cached versions except the installed version:

n prune

Remove the installed Node.js (does not affect the cached versions). This can be usefulto revert to the system version of node (if in a different location), or if you no longerwish to use node and npm, or are switching to a different way of managing them.

n uninstall

There are three commands for working directly with your downloaded versions of Node.js, without reinstalling.

You can show the path to the downloadednode version:

$ n which 6.14.3/usr/local/n/versions/6.14.3/bin/node

Or run a downloadednode version with then run command:

n run 8.11.3 --debug some.js

Or execute a command withPATH modified sonode andnpm will be from the downloaded Node.js version.(NB:npm run this way will be using global node_modules from the target node version folder.)

n exec 10 my-script --fast testn exec lts zsh

A Node.js install normally also includesnpm,npx, andcorepack, but you may wish to preserve your current (especially newer) versions using--preserve:

$ npm install -g npm@latest...$ npm --version6.13.7# Node.js 8.17.0 includes (older) npm 6.13.4$ n -p 8   installed : v8.17.0$ npm --version6.13.7

You can make this the default by setting the environment variable to a non-empty string. There are separate environment variables fornpm andcorepack:

export N_PRESERVE_NPM=1export N_PRESERVE_COREPACK=1

You can be explicit to get the desired behaviour whatever the environment variables:

n --preserve nightlyn --no-preserve latest

Command line help can be obtained fromn --help.

List matching remote versions available for download:

n ls-remote ltsn ls-remote latestn lsr 10n --all lsr

List downloaded versions in cache:

n ls

Download version into cache:

n download 22

Usen to access cached versions (already downloaded) without internet available.

n --offline 12

Remove the cache version after installing using--cleanup. This is particularly useful for a one-shot install, like in a docker container.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tj/n/master/bin/n | bash -s install --cleanup lts

Normallyn run,n exec, andn which will fail if the target version is not already in the cache. You can add--download to use the cache if available or download if required:

n --download run 18.3 my-script.js

Display diagnostics to help resolve problems:

n doctor

If you would like to use a different Node.js mirror which has the same layout as the defaulthttps://nodejs.org/dist/, you can defineN_NODE_MIRROR.

One example is for users in China who can define:

export N_NODE_MIRROR=https://npmmirror.com/mirrors/node

Another example is the Node.jsunofficial-builds project which has downloads for some platforms not made available officially, such as armv6l (Raspberry Pi) and 32-bit x86.

export N_NODE_MIRROR=https://unofficial-builds.nodejs.org/download/release

You may need to specify the architecture explicitly if not autodetected byn, such as usingmusllibc on Alpine:

export N_NODE_MIRROR=https://unofficial-builds.nodejs.org/download/releaseapk add bash curl libstdc++n --arch x64-musl install lts

If the custom mirror requires authentication you can add theurl-encoded username and password into the URL. e.g.

export N_NODE_MIRROR=https://encoded-username:encoded-password@host:port/path

There is alsoN_NODE_DOWNLOAD_MIRROR for a different mirror with same layout as the defaulthttps://nodejs.org/download.

By defaultn picks the binaries matching your system architecture. For example, on a 64 bit systemn will download 64 bit binaries.

On a Mac with Apple silicon:

• for Node.js 16 and higher,n defaults to arm64 binaries which run natively
• for older versions of Node.js,n defaults to x64 binaries which run in Rosetta 2

You can override the default architecture by using the-a or--arch option.

e.g. reinstall latest version of Node.js with x64 binaries:

n rm currentn --arch x64 current

Then command downloads and installs to/usr/local by default, but you may override this location by definingN_PREFIX.To change the location to say$HOME/.n, add lines like the following to your shell initialization file:

export N_PREFIX=$HOME/.nexport PATH=$N_PREFIX/bin:$PATH

If you want to store the downloads under a different location, useN_CACHE_PREFIX. This doesnot affect where the activenode version is installed.

n defaults to using xz compressed Node.js tarballs for the download if it is likely tar on the system supports xz decompression.You can override the automatic choice by setting an environment variable to zero or non-zero:

export N_USE_XZ=0 # to disableexport N_USE_XZ=1 # to enable

You can be explicit to get the desired behaviour whatever the environment variable:

n install --use-xz nightlyn install --no-use-xz latest

In brief:

• N_NODE_MIRROR: SeeCustom source
• N_NODE_DOWNLOAD_MIRROR: SeeCustom source
• support forNO_COLOR andCLICOLOR=0 for controlling use of ANSI color codes
• N_MAX_REMOTE_MATCHES to change the defaultls-remote maximum of 20 matching versions
• N_PRESERVE_NPM: SeePreserving npm
• N_PRESERVE_COREPACK: SeePreserving npm

n downloads a prebuilt Node.js package and installs to a single prefix (e.g./usr/local). This overwrites the previous version. Thebin folder in this location should be in yourPATH (e.g./usr/local/bin).

The downloads are kept in a cache folder to be used for reinstalls. The downloads are also available for limited use usingn which andn run andn exec.

The globalnpm packages are not changed by the install, with theexception ofnpm itself which is part of the Node.js install.