n-wrap

Node wrapper for the n binary manager

Installation

npm install --save n-wrap

Summary

I prefer n to nvm for managing node versions, but there's no good node api for it, so I wrote this as a wrapper for the binary. It works either synchronously or asynchronously and implements all of n's currect functionality (@v2.1.0). All the functions look basically just like the CLI commands, so it shouldn't be much of a leap to figure out how things work. With all of these functions, pass a callback as the final argument to use async. All functions return (a cleaned up version of) stdout (or pass it via callback), which is probably not that useful in most cases, but if you need/want it, it's there. The async implementations follow the standard node async signature of err, results, so if an error occurs, look for it as the first argument. The synchronous implementation will throw the error, so wrap your synchronous executions in a try/catch block.

You can pass any command line flags as camel cased names as the last argument (before the callback). See opted for more on formatting these flags.

Note: This library uses the spawn-sync module which is a polyfill for child_process.spawnSync that uses thread-sleep, which means that it may not work (or work efficiently) on every platform. If you're in doubt, just use the asynchronous verion.

Usage

var n = require('n-wrap');

API

n

Invoke n with a version to install or switch to that version. These are passed directly to the command line, so things like latest, lts, etc. will still work.

var stdout = n('4.2.4');
n('4.2.4', function(err, stdout) {

});

Download, but don't install, the latest version.

var stdout = n('latest', { download: true });
n('latest', { d: true }, function(err, stdout) {

});

Or override the system architecture.

var stdout = n('stable', { a: 'x86' });
n('stable', { arch: 'x86' }, function(err, stdout) {

});

remove/rm

Remove an install binary.

var stdout = n.remove('4.0.0');
n.remove('4.0.0', function(err, stdout) {

});

bin/which

Get the path to a binary

var stdout = n.bin('4.2.4');
n.bin('4.2.4', function(err, path) {

});

use/as

Invoke the node REPL or a node script with a particular binary. Use accepts additional arguments as an array as the second parameter (these are the arguments run under the version specified).

var stdout = n.use('4.2.4', ['foo.js', '--blah'])
n.use('4.2.4', ['node_modules/.bin/mocha', '--debug'], function(err, stdout) {

});

list/ls

List available node versions (returns an array of version strings).

var list = n.list();
n.list(function(err, list) {

});

io.js

In addition to all these commands, the n object has an io property with all the same functions that run against io.js. This is similiar to running n io 1.2.3 or n io use 2.0.0. io is prefixed to the arg list so that the command operates only on io.js binaries.

var stdout = n.io('2.0.0');
n.io('2.0.0', function(err, stdout) {

});

var stdout = n.io.use('3.0.0', ['./bar.js']);
n.io.use('3.0.0', ['./bar.js'], function(err, stdout) {

});

Contributing

Please see the contribution guidelines.