Saturday 6 October 2012

How to update/install Node on Ubuntu

I needed to upgrade node.js on my ubuntu dev machine but could not find any good instructions on the internet, i tried several suggestions and finally got it working using an amalgamation of a few blogs.
My current system setup before the process.
ubuntu64:~$ which node
/usr/local/bin/node
ubuntu64:~$ node -v
v0.4.9

Firstly make sure your system is upto date
ubuntu64:~$ sudo apt-get update
ubuntu64:~$ sudo apt-get install git-core curl build-essential
            openssl libssl-dev

Then clone the Node.js repository at git hub:
ubuntu64:~$ git clone https://github.com/joyent/node.git
ubuntu64:~$ cd node

I wanted the latest tagged version
ubuntu64:~/node$ git tag
....
....big list of all the tags
....
ubuntu64:~/node$ git checkout v0.9.2

Then I removed the old version of node
ubuntu64:~$ which node
/usr/local/bin/node
ubuntu64:~$ cd /usr/local/bin
ubuntu64:/usr/local/bin$ sudo rm node

Now to install the desired version, in may case v0.9.2
ubuntu64:/usr/local/bin$ cd ~/node
ubuntu64:~/node$ ./configure
....
ubuntu64:~/node$ make
....
ubuntu64:~/node$ sudo make install
....

Then I had to run the following to update the profile
ubuntu64:~/node$ . ~/.profile
Finally confirm that node is in fact upgraded, and npm has magically been installed too :-) bonus
ubuntu64:~/node$ which node
/usr/local/bin/node
ubuntu64:~/node$ node -v
v0.9.2
ubuntu64:~/node$ which npm
/usr/local/bin/npm
ubuntu64:~/node$ npm -v
1.1.61