Introduction to Node.js Installing Node.js from the source

Transcript from the "Installing Node.js from the source" Lesson

[00:00:00]
>> Scott: And that's it. So now I'm gonna go over the two different types of installations. Just very briefly, so you can kinda just see them and talk about any issues you might run into, maybe not. Let me get out of this full screen mode very quick, there we go.

[00:00:16] So for Nodejs, you go to nodejs.org. You click on Downloads. And you'll see this thing where it says LTS and then Current. Sometimes, it'll be the same, sometimes, they won't. But LTS means Lifetime Support. So the way that Node versions Node, the Node community versions Node is that every other major version is lifetime support.

[00:00:47] So it's like almost every even version. So you can see latest LTS versions 8.2, or I'm sorry, 8.12. But the current version is 10 something. So that means there's a version 9 somewhere that it's not LTS. It's basically like, you can use this version, but we're not gonna support it forever, because there's some stuff here that we don't really care about.

[00:01:05] The next version after this we'll support forever. So it's how they can try out new features without locking themselves into it and shooting themselves in the foot. And again, all this is because forked Node and created this chaos. So it was so good, it was so good. Yes, LTS is lifetime support.

[00:01:23] Current is whatever the current version is. We're just gonna do the current one, because the current one is 10, and that's most likely gonna be lifetime support, because it's two versions after 8. So just do the current one. I'm trying to think, yeah, actually, you have to do the current one.

[00:01:39] The exercise that I have, taking advantage of only stuff that's in current. So don't do 8.12 because your exercises might not work. So do the current one. If you already installed Node prior to this or if you already had it and it's not on 10, you need to install 10.

[00:01:54] And if you did do that and you're not using NVM you're probably gonna have a problem trying to install another version. Because you're gonna upgrade your version to 10 and it might break stuff that you have now. So this is why NVM is great, because you can just have another version and still have your old version and not mess with anything.

[00:02:10] I recommend if you already have node installed and it is not version 10 then wait till I get to the NVM instructions and use NVM to install another version. If you're fine with just upgrading your version to 10 because you don't really care, then just upgrade your version to 10 and you should be fine.

[00:02:26] But yeah, so you'll click on Current and you can see current is 10.11 and it says it includes npm 6.4.1. We'll talk about npm later. And basically, yeah, these things have installers, just pick on your logo, and install it, and that's basically it. You don't really have to do anything else.

[00:02:46] So if you're going to do this version, as far as installing it from the source. So it's pretty self-explanatory, just download appropriate one for your machine and let the installer do its job. For NVM, we're gonna take a look at that one.