Another Node Manager

A simple and lightweight alternative to Node Version Manager (nvm) for Linux & macOS and NVM for Windows. Supported architectures:

• Linux (armv6l, armv7l, arm64, amd64/x86_64
• Windows (x86_64)
• macOS (x86_64, arm64)

Wanted something to setup my SBC server projects without the overhead of nvm, and I had issues with NVM for Windows.

Works on macOS, Windows, Debian, Fedora, and Arch based systems. Only tested using git-bash (minGW) or Cygwin on Windows. Launching install script in Powershell will spawn a git-bash subprocess, the main anm script will not be added to powershell rc so that may not work directly.

• Test Systems:

  • X86_64 PC: Windows11, Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04, Fedora 36 and Manjaro
  • Raspberry PI 3B, 4B: Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu, Manjaro
  • Rock64, RockPro64: Armbian, Manjaro
  • Pinebook Pro: Manjaro
  • macOS Ventura on M1 Macbook Air and an Intel Hackintosh

• Compatibility for Linux:

  • Node v0.8.6+ (x86, x86_64)
  • Node v4.0.0+ (armv6l, armv7l, arm64)

Before Installing

1. For Windows: this utility cannot install dependencies for windows. These will have to be installed manually.
   • Please install python version 3.8 or higher
   • And, git-scm for windows (for git-bash), or cygwin. Does not work in PowerShell.
   • Enable developer mode in Windows settings. This lets you make symbolic links (mklink) without admin privilege.
2. For Linux: this utility will check and automatically install all dependencies: python, pip, git, curl and wget.
3. For macOS: I think you need to enable XCode CLI utils, accept the terms, so you can use git, python and pip.

Install

1. Install to default user-space. This should install to $HOME/.anm

   For Windows: launch in git-bash for best results and use the curl version, git bash does not have wget.

   curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anujdatar/anm/main/install.sh | bash
   

   wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anujdatar/anm/main/install.sh | bash
   

2. Install ANM system-wide, for all users. This should install to /opt/anm. Use the following:

   NOTE: For Linux only. And, most ANM actions, and npm install -g will require sudo privileges.

   curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anujdatar/anm/main/install.sh | bash -s system
   

   wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anujdatar/anm/main/install.sh | bash -s system
   

3. Custom location:

   • Clone git repository
   • Make install.sh an executable. chmod +x install.sh
   • Run the install script. ./install.sh

4. If you want to use the script without installing, just clone the repository, install dependencies mentioned above, create files named installed and active. Make anm.sh and executable file chmod +x anm.sh. You should now be able to run ANM from the directory ./anm.sh ls-remote, ./anm.sh install --lts, etc.

Usage

1. List locally installed node versions / releases. Should tell you active version as well.

   anm ls
   

2. List node versions available for install from www.nodejs.org
   • List all available options

     anm ls-remote
     

   • List all LTS releases

     anm ls-remote --lts
     

   • List latest LTS release for a particular version

     anm ls-remote --lts <release name>  # gallium, fermium, argon, etc
     

   • List latest release of each version

     anm ls-remote --latest
     

3. Install a version of NodeJs
   • Install the latest available release

     anm install
     

   • Install the latest LTS version release

     anm install --lts
     

   • Install the latest release of a specific LTS version

     anm install --lts <release name>  # gallium, fermium, argon, etc
     

   • Install a specific release by version number

     anm install v16.15.0 # or 18.2.0, v-prefix not necessary
     

4. Uninstall an installed version of NodeJs

   anm uninstall <version number>  # v16.15.0 or 14.19.3, v-prefix not necessary
   

5. Use a particular version of NodeJs, if you already have a few installed

   anm use <version number>  # v16.15.0 or 18.2.0, v-prefix not necessary
   

6. Deactivate a currently installed version of NodeJs if managed by ANM

   anm deactivate <version number>  # v16.15.0 or 18.2.0, v-prefix not necessary
   

7. Other misc. commands

   anm upgrade      # upgrade to latest ANM version
   

   anm --version    # print version of ANM that is installed
   

   anm --path       # print path where ANM is installed, NodeJs binaries in a subfolder here
   

   anm --help       # print help message
   

More on Installation

The convenience script does the following in case you want to install manually.

1. Update/upgrade system (on Linux only)
2. Install missing dependencies using your package manager (apt/dnf/pacman) (on Linux only) - curl, wget, git, jq, python3, python3-pip (python-pip if using Arch). Ironically you need either curl or wget to get started. 😝
3. Install packaging and urllib3 using pip. pip3 install packaging urllib3
4. Clone the ANM git repo to $HOME/.anm (Windows and Linux).
   • /opt/anm if Linux-system-wide-installation. This step is skipped if you are installing from the repo-clone.
5. Makes anm.sh an executable (chmod +x /<path>/anm.sh). And creates a symlink in $HOME/.anm/bin
   • ln -s $HOME/.anm/anm.sh $HOME/.anm/bin/anm
   • or /opt/anm/bin if system-wide install on Linux
6. Adds the following to your shell rc profile (.bashrc, .zshrc, .profile). This is required for anm detect install location and work correctly.

   # >>>>>>>> Block added by ANM install >>>>>>>>
   if ! [[ "$PATH" =~ "$install_path/bin" ]]; then
   [ -d "$install_path/bin" ] && export PATH="$install_path/bin:$PATH"
   fi
   
   if ! [[ "$PATH" =~ "$install_path/versions/current" ]]; then
   [ -d "$install_path/bin" ] && export PATH="$install_path/versions/current:$PATH"
   fi
   
   if [ -d "$install_path" ]; then export ANM_DIR="$install_path"; fi
   # >>>>>>>>>>>>>> End ANM block >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

   • or /etc/profile.d/anm_profile.sh, if system-wide installation on Linux
   • Currently bash and zsh are supported. Other shell users should make sure $HOME/.profile and/or /etc/profile are loaded when shell is launched.

Note: On Windows, the default installation directory is C:\Users\<username>\anm regardless of if you are using git-bash (which is mingw I believe) or if you have cygwin installed separately (in C:\cygwin). But the rc file that gets updated will depend on the terminal emulator you use. If you use git-bash your rc file should be C:\Users\<username>\.bashrc or C:\Users\<username>\.zshrc. But if you use cygwin you default might be C:\cygwin64\home\<username>\.bashrc or C:\cygwin64\home\<username>\.zshrc. So if you want it to operate in both environments, you will have to add the block to the other rc files manually.

In your rc files on git-bash/mingw you install path should look like /c/Users/<username>/.anm. Whereas on cygwin it should be /cygdrive/c/Users/<username>/.anm so the block above may look different and also needs to be that way. All installed nodejs versions will be stored in the /.anm/versions/node/ directory. Defaultcorepack binary does not seem to work on Windows in cygwin at the moment. crlf vs lf line ending issue. Works in git-bash (mingw) though.

You might have to restart your system, or logout and log back in, or just close shell and reopen. Depends. You should be able to use anm from command line after this.

Uninstall

Unfortunately this has to be manual for now

1. Remove the installed directory rm -rf /home/$USER/.anm
2. Remove the block added by ANM from your RC file ($HOME/.bashrc or $HOME/.zshrc or $HOME/.profile). Or delete /etc/profile.d/anm_profile.sh for system-wide installation on Linux

TODO:

1. Look into aliasing installed node versions

Thanks

Uses some ideas from NVM, but works differently. Was initially inspired by their work. But when I started this project, I had issues with NVM on some of my RockChip based SBCs. It works perfectly now, but I had a few different ideas I wanted to try out for my local servers.

Unlike NVM, ANM does not load it's entire code to the shell profile every time you launch terminal. But has very limited functionality compared to NVM. Probably not the most elegant solution, but a learning process for me.