Trying to wrap my head around Solus' distribution of Node.js

paracetamol

Let me preface this by saying that while I do use Node.js for development, I am not that familiar with the ecosystem and only care about it as far as getting tools built on top of it to work. Those tools, however, occasionally nag me about newer versions of node/npm being available, which prompted me to check my node's version:

❯ node --version v20.20.0

That gives me a pause, because current version of Node.js sits at 25.8.1 and the latest LTS is at 24.14.10. That's quite a bit behind.

Did I mess something up while installing node? What does the package repository say?

❯ eopkg search nodejs nodejs - Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. nodejs-20 - Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. nodejs-20-dbginfo - Debug symbols for nodejs-20 nodejs-22 - Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. nodejs-22-dbginfo - Debug symbols for nodejs-22 python-hatch-nodejs-version - Hatch plugin to read pyproject.toml metadata from package.json

Okay, there's also a 22.* branch available and an unversioned nodejs. I must have installed the 20.* one by mistake. The unversioned one will surely be either the current or latest LTS branch. Let's reinstall:

❯ sudo eopkg remove nodejs-20 nodejs ❯ sudo eopkg install -y nodejs ❯ node --version v20.20.0

Okay, I'm confused. Is there a reason to keep the Node.js at such low version? Surely it isn't yet another Python 2 situation? I don't see a section dedicated to Node.js in the help center. Sifting through the forums didn't enlighten me either.

I'm a bit worried I'll boot up Solus after a weekly sync and find some of the tooling I use broken, since my node is too old. Should I be using docker or local node instead of system packages?

Harvey

NodeJS is in the repo for packages in the repo that need it which is also why there are multiple versions, not everything will work with the same version. Additionally these are LTS releases, they still receive updates.

If you are using it for development then I would advise looking into docker and/or nvm.

paracetamol

From my point of view a distro provided Node is more attractive than using something like nvm.

For starters, contrary to tools like pyenv or uv in Python, what nvm offers is still a global installation - which is separate from the system one, but it doesn't offer per project isolation apart from honoring version specified in a project's .nvmrc. Given that distro issued Node is relatively up to date (which one would expect a rolling release type of distro would provide), nvm doesn't really offer that much advantage.

Another issue is that original nvm is tied to bash. My shell of choice is fish, so I need to either swith to bash for development or use a fish specific reimplementation.

In light of increasing number of supply chain attacks, a distro issued Node trumps (in my eyes at least) one managed by a less trusted script that is a rewrite of also less trusted script installed from github by curl-bashing (with all due respect to their maintainers, whose job I appreciate).

CorvusRuber

paracetamol For starters, contrary to tools like pyenv or uv in Python, what nvm offers is still a global installation - which is separate from the system one, but it doesn't offer per project isolation apart from honoring version specified in a project's .nvmrc. Given that distro issued Node is relatively up to date (which one would expect a rolling release type of distro would provide), nvm doesn't really offer that much advantage.

With nvm you can handle different versions of node quite easily....which is a big advantage if, for whatever reason, you don't have to use the latest version of node.
Also, there's volta that allows you to specify node versions on a project by project base

paracetamol Another issue is that original nvm is tied to bash. My shell of choice is fish, so I need to either swith to bash for development or use a fish specific reimplementation.

nvm for fish (provided either via fisher or omf) works without issues and is identical to the bash version.

I've used both nvm and volta professionally (big projects for big companies), always through fish. No issues whatsoever.

paracetamol

Fish reimplementation of nvm is what I use, so naturally I am aware of it. Perhaps I wasn't clear conveying that in the paragraph mentioning it as one of the options.

As for Volta, it is no longer maintained. You may want to consider switching to mise: https://github.com/jdx/mise

Both Volta and mise, just like nvm and its variants, are installed via curl-bash or an equivalent. I don't want to start an argument whether that practice is dangerous or just fine. It's over a decade long debate by this point and transcends the javascript ecosystem. If you or anyone is interested in the more paranoid perspective which I subscribe to, there are some recent pieces summarizing it well:

silke

@paracetamol: If you really want an updated version of NodeJS in the repo, I recommend you create a package update request with details on which versions you'd like to see. We can flag it as needing a maintainer and see if someone steps up to maintain a larger set of nodejs packages (nodejs-current, nodejs-24, etc).

paracetamol

Makes sense! Thanks!