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Node in rtx

The following are instructions for using the node rtx core plugin. This is used when there isn't a git plugin installed named "node".

If you want to use asdf-nodejs or rtx-node then run rtx plugins install node GIT_URL.

The code for this is inside the rtx repository at ./src/plugins/core/node.rs.

Usage

The following installs the latest version of node-20.x and makes it the global default:

$ rtx use -g node@20

Behind the scenes, rtx uses node-build to install pre-compiled binaries and compile from source if necessary. You can check its README for additional settings and some troubleshooting.

Configuration

node-build already has a handful of settings, in additional to that rtx-node has a few extra configuration variables:

  • RTX_NODE_VERBOSE_INSTALL [bool]: Enables verbose output for downloading and building.
  • RTX_NODE_FORCE_COMPILE [bool]: Forces compilation from source instead of preferring pre-compiled binaries
  • RTX_NODE_CONCURRENCY [uint]: How many jobs should be used in compilation. Defaults to half the computer cores
  • RTX_NODE_DEFAULT_PACKAGES_FILE [string]: location of default packages file, defaults to $HOME/.default-npm-packages
  • NODEJS_ORG_MIRROR [string]: (Legacy) overrides the default mirror used for downloading the distibutions, alternative to the NODE_BUILD_MIRROR_URL node-build env var

Default node packages

rtx-node can automatically install a default set of npm packages right after installing a node version. To enable this feature, provide a $HOME/.default-npm-packages file that lists one package per line, for example:

lodash
request
express

You can specify a non-default location of this file by setting a RTX_NODE_DEFAULT_PACKAGES_FILE variable.

.nvmrc and .node-version support

rtx uses a .tool-versions or .rtx.toml file for auto-switching between software versions. To ease migration, you can have also have it read an existing .nvmrc or .node-version file to find out what version of Node.js should be used. This will be used if node isn't defined in .tool-versions/.rtx.toml.

Running the wrapped node-build command

We provide a command for running the installed node-build command:

rtx node node-build --version

node-build advanced variations

node-build has some additional variations aside from the versions listed in rtx ls-remote node (chakracore/graalvm branches and some others). As of now, we weakly support these variations. In the sense that they are available for install and can be used in a .tool-versions file, but we don't list them as installation candidates nor give them full attention.

Some of them will work out of the box, and some will need a bit of investigation to get them built. We are planning in providing better support for these variations in the future.

To list all the available variations run:

rtx node node-build --definitions

Note that this command only lists the current node-build definitions. You might want to update the local node-build repository before listing them.

Manually updating node-build definitions

Every new node version needs to have a definition file in the node-build repository. rtx-node already tries to update node-build on every new version installation, but if you want to update node-build manually for some reason you can clear the cache and list the versions:

rtx cache clean
rtx ls-remote node

"nodejs" -> "node" Alias

You cannot install/use a plugin named "nodejs". If you attempt this, rtx will just renamed it to "node". See the FAQ for an explanation.