Allow using the system version of node

[yardnsm]

nvm allows to use the system version of node and npm (if installed). Having this feature in fnm will be awesome.

$ fnm use system

Also, maybe $ fnm ls should also list the system version.

[Schniz]

Interesting!

[Schniz]

@wildcard is also interested in this and he might implement this! I suggested the following path:

• Make a fake alias, called system, that will be linked to /dev/null.
• When the current version will use the system alias, it will be linked to /dev/null, with no surprises.
• There is no node on /dev/null, therefore it will fallback to the rest of the $PATH.
• The rest of the $PATH should have node installed, otherwise, node wouldn't work! and I think this is the right way - using system means fnm doesn't manipulate $PATH, you're on your own.

This should be very performant and should just use the operating system "primitives"!

Oh, yeah.

[friederbluemle]

I can do fnm use system, but when I do fnm default system I get this error:

Can't find a version installed in /Users/<name>/.fnm/node-versions/system/installation

Any ideas?

[thomsj]

@friederbluemle I believe that it is not (currently) possible to alias the system version.

[friederbluemle]

Thanks for the reply @thomsj - It would be great to have this as an option. I very rarely require a Node version other than the default stable release shipped by OS package managers. So in almost all cases, I would simply use system as a default.

[ljharb]

Note that every node release is stable; OS package managers are disastrously conservative on that front.

[friederbluemle]

@ljharb - Sorry, by stable I just meant whatever was shipping with the OS packager. At least pacman (on Arch Linux) and brew (on macOS) are usually only a few days behind each release (as it appears on nodejs.org). I'm not sure about other package managers. Fortunately the 0.x days (where almost every release was a breaking release) are over.

[broven]

any update on this? fnm default system still got error

[selrond]

Seems to already be implemented in #556 just not released yet