Different node version for different projects, is there a way of telling node which version to use?

user_2524323 0
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I have a pretty common (i guess) problem. Many of my projects utilize nodejs, some for business logic, others only for some building task.

I need to have different runtimes in different projects, one of my electron apps requires node 7.10.0, a typical build suite requires node 8.x.

Now i know - i can use sudo n 7.10.0 or sudo n latest to switch the runtime globally on my computer (For those, who dont know this - have a look at "n")

Anyway, IMO this is not so convenient (some times, i need to rebuild all the modules after switching versions, often i forget to switch and so on). Is there a way of telling node which interpreter to use? Can i use a .npmrc file in a project directory to force a specific nodejs version within that subdirectory?

I searched exactly for this (npmrc node version) but was not lucky enough to find something.

n npm node.js linux
3 Answers

Okay, i found a similar quesion:

Automatically switch to correct version of Node based on project

it seems you can install "avn" and use a .node-version file to do exactly that.

sudo npm install -g avn avn-n
avn setup

then you can create a .node-version file in your project and enter the desired version

echo 7.10.0 > .node-version

Then avn will detect that and activate the correct version

Unfortunately i get an additional permissions error. So to make this work, you need to install/configure "n" to work without sudo/root.

user_25243230

If you're fine with using another tool you could use nvshim.

pip install nvshim  # this is all you need to do

It does not slow your shell startup or switching directories, instead moving the lookup of which node version to when you call node, npm or npx by shimming those binaries. More details in the docs.

Source, I wrote the tool.

user_30729060

NVM (Node Version Manager) allow us to use different versions of node quite easily on a single machine. You can have a look at here how to configure and use it.

user_95273240
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