Installing and Building Node.js

Installing/Building Node.js

---

Installing

• Linux
• Mac
• Windows
• SunOS

---

this is a work in process

Building

• Building Prerequisites
• Linux
• Mac
• Windows
• Cygwin

---

Other information

• Managing multiple versions of Visual Studio
• Upgrading on Mac with .pkg
• Known Issues

---

Installing on Linux

You can install a pre-built version of Node.js via the downloads page available in a .tar.gz.

Installing on Mac

You can install a pre-built version of Node.js via the downloads page using a .pkg or available in a .tar.gz.

Installing on Windows

You can install a pre-built version of Node.js via the downloads page using a .exe or a .msi.

Installing on SunOS

You can install a pre-built version of Node.js via the downloads page available in a .tar.gz.

Installing via package manager

See Installing Node.js via package manager for more information.

Building Prerequisites

• GCC 4.8 or newer, or clang 3.4 or newer

• GNU make 3.81 or newer. Pre-installed on most systems. Sometimes called gmake (required on FreeBSD).

• python 2.6 / 2.7. The build tools provided require Python to configure the project correctly.

• libexecinfo (FreeBSD and OpenBSD only.) Required by V8. pkg_add -r libexecinfo installs it.

• ICU (optional) to build the Intl (EcmaScript 402) support. See Intl for more details.

Building on Linux

The filenames vary with the Node.js's version. The following examples are for Node.js v1.3.0.

Do something like this

tar -zxf iojs-v1.3.0.tar.gz # Available at https://iojs.org/dist/v1.3.0/iojs-v1.3.0.tar.gz
cd iojs-v1.3.0
./configure && make && sudo make install

If you are installing on an illumos 64 bit system consider the following to enable dtrace support

tar -zxf iojs-v1.3.0.tar.gz # Available at https://iojs.org/dist/v1.3.0/iojs-v1.3.0.tar.gz
cd iojs-v1.3.0
./configure --with-dtrace --dest-cpu=x64 && make && sudo make install

Or, if you'd like to install from the repository

git clone https://github.com/iojs/node.js.git
cd node.js
git checkout v1.3.0
./configure && make && sudo make install

You may wish to install Node.js in a custom folder instead of a global directory.

./configure --prefix=/custom/folder && make && sudo make install

You can really speed up building process by adding -j argument with a number usually approximately equals number of cores plus one, so make -j 5 would be appropriate for a quad-core processor.

You may want to put the Node.js executables in your path as well for easier use, if you specified a custom prefix. Node.js will be available after logging out and back in again, if you installed Node.js to the default /usr/local/ location. Add this line to your ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshenv

export PATH=$PATH:/custom/folder/bin

Other Information

Upgrading on Mac with .pkg

You can download the latest .pkg and run the installer and it will overwrite the existing version of Node.js currently installed.