CODEWITHSUNDEEP
node.jsnpm
Steven Lu
Steven Lu

Reputation: 43427

Managing global npm packages when using nvm

I feel like I need to be able to install global npm packages separately into the NVM dir. 

$ nvm install v0.11
######################################################################## 100.0%
Now using node v0.11.16
$ node-inspector
Node Inspector v0.9.2
Visit http://127.0.0.1:8080/debug?port=5858 to start debugging.

my node-inspector stopped working!

$ npm update -g
<bunch of updating, succeeds>

Maybe this will help... Nope! still broken. Sigh. Perhaps... node-inspector doesn't work for a v0.11.16 (that's being run on nvm). Perhaps. Who knows. Well, time to abort. 

$ nvm use system
Now using system version of node: v0.10.32.
$ node-inspector --version
dyld: lazy symbol binding failed: Symbol not found: _node_module_register
  Referenced from: /usr/local/lib/node_modules/node-inspector/node_modules/ws/build/Release/bufferutil.node
  Expected in: dynamic lookup

dyld: Symbol not found: _node_module_register
  Referenced from: /usr/local/lib/node_modules/node-inspector/node_modules/ws/build/Release/bufferutil.node
  Expected in: dynamic lookup

[1]    93845 trace trap  node-inspector --version

Okay.... Well.... Shit.

So anyway, at this point I'm not looking for instructions on how to fix. I may well be hosed. The main question here is what am I supposed to do to manage these npm packages which are meant to be command line tools and which have compiled components that appear tied to specific versions? I understand that when I install nvm and incorporate it into my system, my shell is able to switch its $PATH so that when I call node and npm, they will run using the node version I picked.

But it appears as though the global npm packages get put into /usr/local/bin/ somewhere and they're just stuck there and become unable to follow what I do with nvm -- While it may not be the case for the "theoretically well-behaved node package", in practice (for something like node-inspector at least) it sure looks like it's liable to gleefully explode when not executed using the node that installed it.

In the meantime I have to basically npm remove -g <package> && npm install -g <package> any package that I find behaves strangely in this manner, every single time that I want to run that package under a new node version using nvm.

This seems wrong.

Is it wrong?

And, a corollary to this would be that every time I invoke nvm powers to test some given node.js app with a different version of node, I pretty much should do it by cloning it in a whole new directory and starting fresh, because otherwise I'll probably find out that I will need to rm -rf node_modules && npm install just to make it function at all...

Upvotes: 18

Views: 11601

Answers (2)

seangates
seangates

Reputation: 1522

UPDATE October 2020:

If you've already installed the desired Node version, according to the documentation this is also available:

nvm reinstall-packages <from-version>

Props to @rashi for pointing out the syntax above.

From the nvm help message:

nvm install [-s] <version>                Download and install a <version>, [-s] from source. Uses .nvmrc if available
    --reinstall-packages-from=<version>     When installing, reinstall packages installed in <node|iojs|node version number>
    --lts                                   When installing, only select from LTS (long-term support) versions
    --lts=<LTS name>                        When installing, only select from versions for a specific LTS line

The relevant flag is --reinstall-packages-from=<version>. Simply re-run your command (example):

$ nvm install v6.9.2 --reinstall-packages-from=v4.4.5

Upvotes: 26

esp
esp

Reputation: 7687

I may have misunderstood your situation, but it seems like you need to install all global packages you use separately for each node version you are using. The reason it works like that is that you may need different versions of packages for different node versions. So whenever you use nvm use ... it changes paths to global packages to the packages installed for the selected version of node.

Hope it helps.

Upvotes: -1

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