node-build is a command-line tool that simplifies installation of any Node version from source or precompiled binary on Unix-like systems.

It is available as a plugin for nodenv as the nodenv install command, or as a standalone program as the node-build command.

• Installation
  • Upgrading
    • Updating available build versions
• Usage
  • Basic Usage
  • Advanced Usage
    • Binaries
    • Custom Build Definitions
    • Custom Build Configuration
    • Applying Patches
    • Checksum Verification
    • Package Mirrors
    • Keeping the build directory after installation
    • Retry installation without v/node-/node-v prefix
• Getting Help
• Credits

brew install node-build

Upgrade with:

brew upgrade node-build

git clone https://github.com/nodenv/node-build.git "$(nodenv root)"/plugins/node-build

Upgrade with:

git -C "$(nodenv root)"/plugins/node-build pull

First, download a tarball from https://github.com/nodenv/node-build/releases/latest. Then:

tar -xzf node-build-*.tar.gz
PREFIX=/usr/local ./node-build-*/install.sh

# As a nodenv plugin
$ nodenv install --list                    # lists all available versions of Node
$ nodenv install 10.13.0                   # installs Node 10.13.0 to ~/.nodenv/versions

# As a standalone program
$ node-build --definitions                 # lists all available versions of Node
$ node-build 10.13.0 ~/local/node-10.13.0  # installs Node 10.13.0 to ~/local/node-10.13.0

Warning node-build mostly does not verify that system dependencies are present before downloading and attempting to compile Node from source. Please ensure that all requisite libraries such as build tools and development headers are already present on your system.

Firstly, if a precompiled binary exists for your platform, node-build downloads and installs it. Otherwise it will build node from source. Basically, what node-build does when installing a Node version is this:

• Downloads an official tarball of Node source code;
• Extracts the archive into a temporary directory on your system;
• Executes ./configure --prefix=/path/to/destination in the source code;
• Runs make install to compile Node;
• Verifies that the installed Node is functional.

By default, node-build will attempt to match one of the precompiled binaries to your platform. If there is a binary for your platform, it will install it instead of compiling from source. To force compilation, pass the -c or --compile flag.

To install a version of Node that is not recognized by node-build, you can specify the path to a custom build definition file in place of a Node version number.

Check out default build definitions as examples on how to write definition files.

Additionally, check out the node-build-update-defs plugin. It generates the standard build definitions for releases available from nodejs.org. This allows you to install node versions as soon as they are available from nodejs.org, without waiting for node-build itself to provide them. Once installed:

nodenv update-version-defs

The build process may be configured through the following environment variables:

Both nodenv install and node-build commands support the -p/--patch flag to apply a patch to the Node source code before building. Patches are read from standard input:

# applying a single patch
$ nodenv install --patch 11.1.0 < /path/to/node.patch

# applying a patch from HTTP
$ nodenv install --patch 11.1.0 < <(curl -sSL http://git.io/node.patch)

# applying multiple patches
$ cat fix1.patch fix2.patch | nodenv install --patch 11.1.0

All Node definition files bundled with node-build include checksums for packages, meaning that all externally downloaded packages are automatically checked for integrity after fetching.

See the next section for more information on how to author checksums.

To speed up downloads, node-build can fetch package files from a mirror. To benefit from this, the packages must specify their checksum:

 # example:
 install_package "node-v12.0.0" "https://nodejs.org/dist/v12.0.0/node-v12.0.0.tar.gz#<SHA2>"

node-build will first try to fetch this package from $NODE_BUILD_MIRROR_URL/<SHA2> (note: this is the complete URL), where <SHA2> is the checksum for the file. It will fall back to downloading the package from the original location if:

• the package was not found on the mirror;
• the mirror is down;
• the download is corrupt, i.e. the file's checksum doesn't match;
• no tool is available to calculate the checksum; or
• NODE_BUILD_SKIP_MIRROR is enabled.

You may specify a custom mirror by setting NODE_BUILD_MIRROR_URL.

If a mirror site doesn't conform to the above URL format, you can specify the complete URL by setting NODE_BUILD_MIRROR_PACKAGE_URL. It behaves the same as NODE_BUILD_MIRROR_URL except being a complete URL.

For more control over the construction of the mirror url, you can specify a command by setting NODE_BUILD_MIRROR_CMD. node-build will invoke NODE_BUILD_MIRROR_CMD with two arguments: package_url and checksum. The provided command should print the desired mirror's complete package URL to STDOUT.

Both node-build and nodenv install accept the -k or --keep flag, which tells node-build to keep the downloaded source after installation. This can be useful if you need to use gdb and memprof with Node.

Source code will be kept in a parallel directory tree $(nodenv root)/sources when using --keep with the nodenv install command. You should specify the location of the source code with the NODE_BUILD_BUILD_PATH environment variable when using --keep with node-build.

The nodenv-install plugin can attempt a retry if the installation failed due to a missing definition file. If the given node version name begins with 'v', 'node', or 'node-v', the retry will drop the prefix and try again. For instance, if nodenv install node-v11.0.0 fails because a definition file does not exist by the name "node-v11.0.0", it will retry as "11.0.0". For this retry to be attempted, the environment variable NODENV_PREFIX_RETRY must be non-empty.

Please see the node-build wiki for solutions to common problems. Also, check out the ruby-build wiki.

If you can't find an answer on the wiki, open an issue on the issue tracker. Be sure to include the full build log for build failures.

Forked from Sam Stephenson's ruby-build by Will McKenzie and modified for node.