Node Version Manager [][3] [][4]

Intro
About
Installing and Updating
Usage
Running Tests
Environment variables
Bash Completion
- Usage
Compatibility Issues
Installing nvm on Alpine Linux
- Alpine Linux 3.13+
- Alpine Linux 3.5 - 3.12
Uninstalling / Removal
- Manual Uninstall
Docker For Development Environment
Problems
macOS Troubleshooting
WSL Troubleshooting
Maintainers
Project Support
Enterprise Support
License
Copyright notice

Intro

nvm allows you to quickly install and use different versions of node via the command line.

Example:

$ 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

Simple as that!

About

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 (sh, dash, ksh, zsh, bash), in particular on these platforms: unix, macOS, and windows WSL.

Installing and Updating

Install & Update Script

To install or update nvm, you should run the [install script][2]. 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/v0.40.0/install.sh | bash

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.0/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 (~/.bash_profile, ~/.zshrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.bashrc).

export NVM_DIR="$([ -z "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}" ] && printf %s "${HOME}/.nvm" || printf %s "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/nvm")"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm

Additional Notes

If the environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is present, it will place the nvm files there.
You can add --no-use to the end of the above script (...nvm.sh --no-use) to postpone using nvm until you manually use it.
You can customize the install source, directory, profile, and version using the NVM_SOURCE, NVM_DIR, PROFILE, and NODE_VERSION variables. Eg: curl ... | NVM_DIR="path/to/nvm". Ensure that the NVM_DIR does not contain a trailing slash.
The installer can use git, curl, or wget to download nvm, whichever is available.
You can instruct the installer to not edit your shell config (for example if you already get completions via a zsh nvm plugin) by setting PROFILE=/dev/null before running the install.sh script. Here's an example one-line command to do that: PROFILE=/dev/null bash -c 'curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.0/install.sh | bash'

Troubleshooting on Linux

On Linux, after running the install script, if you get nvm: command not found or see no feedback from your terminal after you type command -v nvm, simply close your current terminal, open a new terminal, and try verifying again. Alternatively, you can run the following commands for the different shells on the command line:

bash: source ~/.bashrc

zsh: source ~/.zshrc

ksh: . ~/.profile

These should pick up the nvm command.

Troubleshooting on macOS

Since OS X 10.9, /usr/bin/git has been preset by Xcode command line tools, which means we can't properly detect if Git is installed or not. You need to manually install the Xcode command line tools before running the install script, otherwise, it'll fail. (see #1782)

If you get nvm: command not found after running the install script, one of the following might be the reason:

Since macOS 10.15, the default shell is zsh and nvm will look for .zshrc to update, none is installed by default. Create one with touch ~/.zshrc and run the install script again.
If you use bash, the previous default shell, your system may not have .bash_profile or .bashrc files where the command is set up. Create one of them with touch ~/.bash_profile or touch ~/.bashrc and run the install script again. Then, run . ~/.bash_profile or . ~/.bashrc to pick up the nvm command.
You have previously used bash, but you have zsh installed. You need to manually add these lines to ~/.zshrc and run . ~/.zshrc.
You might need to restart your terminal instance or run . ~/.nvm/nvm.sh. Restarting your terminal/opening a new tab/window, or running the source command will load the command and the new configuration.
If the above didn't help, you might need to restart your terminal instance. Try opening a new tab/window in your terminal and retry.

If the above doesn't fix the problem, you may try the following:

If you use bash, it may be that your .bash_profile (or ~/.profile) does not source your ~/.bashrc properly. You could fix this by adding source ~/<your_profile_file> to it or following the next step below.
Try adding the snippet from the install section, that finds the correct nvm directory and loads nvm, to your usual profile (~/.bash_profile, ~/.zshrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.bashrc).
For more information about this issue and possible workarounds, please refer here

Note For Macs with the Apple Silicon chip, node started offering arm64 arch Darwin packages since v16.0.0 and experimental arm64 support when compiling from source since v14.17.0. If you are facing issues installing node using nvm, you may want to update to one of those versions or later.

Ansible

You can use a task:

- name: Install nvm
  ansible.builtin.shell: >
    curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.0/install.sh | bash
  args:
    creates: "{{ ansible_env.HOME }}/.nvm/nvm.sh"

Verify Installation

To verify that nvm has been installed, do:

command -v nvm

which should output nvm if the installation was successful. Please note that which nvm will not work, since nvm is a sourced shell function, not an executable binary.

Note: On Linux, after running the install script, if you get nvm: command not found or see no feedback from your terminal after you type command -v nvm, simply close your current terminal, open a new terminal, and try verifying again.

Important Notes

If you're running a system without prepackaged binary available, which means you're going to install node or io.js from its source code, you need to make sure your system has a C++ compiler. For OS X, Xcode will work, for Debian/Ubuntu based GNU/Linux, the build-essential and libssl-dev packages work.

Note: nvm also supports Windows in some cases. It should work through WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) depending on the version of WSL. It should also work with GitBash (MSYS) or Cygwin. Otherwise, for Windows, a few alternatives exist, which are neither supported nor developed by us:

Note: nvm does not support [Fish] either (see #303). Alternatives exist, which are neither supported nor developed by us:

bass allows you to use utilities written for Bash in fish shell
fast-nvm-fish only works with version numbers (not aliases) but doesn't significantly slow your shell startup
plugin-nvm plugin for Oh My Fish, which makes nvm and its completions available in fish shell
fnm - fisherman-based version manager for fish
fish-nvm - Wrapper around nvm for fish, delays sourcing nvm until it's actually used.

Note: We still have some problems with FreeBSD, because there is no official pre-built binary for FreeBSD, and building from source may need patches; see the issue ticket:

Note: On OS X, if you do not have Xcode installed and you do not wish to download the ~4.3GB file, you can install the Command Line Tools. You can check out this blog post on how to just that:

How to Install Command Line Tools in OS X Mavericks & Yosemite (Without Xcode)

Note: On OS X, if you have/had a "system" node installed and want to install modules globally, keep in mind that:

When using nvm you do not need sudo to globally install a module with npm -g, so instead of doing sudo npm install -g grunt, do instead npm install -g grunt
If you have an ~/.npmrc file, make sure it does not contain any prefix settings (which is not compatible with nvm)
You can (but should not?) keep your previous "system" node install, but nvm will only be available to your user account (the one used to install nvm). This might cause version mismatches, as other users will be using /usr/local/lib/node_modules/* VS your user account using ~/.nvm/versions/node/vX.X.X/lib/node_modules/*

Homebrew installation is not supported. If you have issues with homebrew-installed nvm, please brew uninstall it, and install it using the instructions below, before filing an issue.

Note: If you're using zsh you can easily install nvm as a zsh plugin. Install zsh-nvm and run nvm upgrade to upgrade.

Note: Git versions before v1.7 may face a problem of cloning nvm source from GitHub via https protocol, and there is also different behavior of git before v1.6, and git prior to v1.17.10 can not clone tags, so the minimum required git version is v1.7.10. If you are interested in the problem we mentioned here, please refer to GitHub's HTTPS cloning errors article.

Git Install

If you have git installed (requires git v1.7.10+):

clone this repo in the root of your user profile
- cd ~/ from anywhere then git clone https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm.git .nvm
cd ~/.nvm and check out the latest version with git checkout v0.40.0
activate nvm by sourcing it from your shell: . ./nvm.sh

Now add these lines to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.zshrc file to have it automatically sourced upon login: (you may have to add to more than one of the above files)

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion"  # This loads nvm