First off, I'm new to Node.js and npm, but I like it quite a lot already.
I installed and tinkered with quite a few packages and tools, and I must
say, I'm quite impressed with what npm can pull off in terms of package
management.
Local package versions per project, user-global packages by doing `npm set
prefix $HOME/.local/` and then doing `npm install <package> -g`, system
global installs with `sudo npm install <package> -g`, all really nice and
dandy.
No mucking about with Python's `virtualenv`, renaming script host
executables, patching paths in scripts, none of that stuff.
That is until I hit some packages that just *must* use a different (usually
older) version of NodeJS than the one which I'm using.
'n', 'nvm', 'nave' all come to assist, but to me they just seem to
introduce YAVE (Yet Another VirtualEnv), with all the troubles (activating,
deactivating, keeping track of which shell you're in, etc.)
I'm wondering if the following scheme could help out in all this
Have an app.js check the version of Node.js it is running in, and have
itself restarted using the correct version if mismatch, or bomb out if no
match at all:
--[app.js]--
// Yes, I know that the 'node' package was used for installing Node.js
itself
// but it's deprecated now, anyway.
require("node").version(">=0.6, <0.8"); // Yes, ignore the return value, we
want the side-effects :-)
// Do some cool stuff
--[end of app.js]--
This would introduce a Perl-like syntax for version requirement.
It would be even better if node itself or a wrapper could read version info
straight from the app's package.json, then the check could be done
implicitly on startup.
I'm not yet really clear yet on how to implement the "node" package, but as
I see it, it could just export the function 'version', which checks its
only argument against the running node version, and if it doesn't match,
spawns the right version of node, passing it the original app script name
and commandline parameters. The parent node process can then just exit.
Maybe even better is to pass the required node version back to a node
wrapper script, and have that exec() the right node version with the
original app.js.
An interesting bonus would be that scripts will not accidentally be
executed using Windows Script Host or any other non-Node.js script hosts,
as long as they don't have a 'node' package or script in their search path.
Any ideas on whether my idea is feasible at all? Anyone interested in
(helping me with) implementing this?
Kind regards, Alain
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