Installation

Building and Installing Node.js

Node has several dependencies. If you are building from source you should only need 2 things:

• python - version 2.5 or higher. The build tools distributed with Node run on python.

• libssl-dev - If you plan to use SSL/TLS encryption in your networking, you'll need this. Libssl is the library used in the openssl tool. On Linux and Unix systems it can usually be installed with your favorite package manager. The lib comes pre- installed on OS X.

Unix

Do something like this

tar -xvf node-v0.6.5.tar.gz
cd node-v0.6.5
./configure
make
sudo make install

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

./configure --prefix=/opt/node
make
sudo make install

You may want to put the node executables in your path as well for easier use:

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/opt/node/bin' >> ~/.profile # ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc on some systems

To reload the path in your current instance of Terminal or bash, use:

. ~/.profile # Or ~/.bash_profile

If you have any installation problems, look at Troubleshooting Installation, try an alternative installation method, or stop into #node.js and ask questions.

Windows

You need python and Microsoft Visual Studio but not OpenSSL. In cmd.exe do the following

C:\Users\ryan>tar -xvf node-v0.6.5.tar.gz
C:\Users\ryan>cd node-v0.6.5
C:\Users\ryan\node-v0.6.5>vcbuild.bat release
[Wait 20 minutes]
C:\Users\ryan\node-v0.6.5>Release\node.exe
> process.versions
{ node: '0.6.5',
  v8: '3.6.6.11',
  ares: '1.7.5-DEV',
  uv: '0.6',
  openssl: '0.9.8r' }
>

The executable will be in Release\node.exe.