Installing Node.js on Arch Linux

November 1, 2014

Preface

NOTE: These instructions are only relevent to Arch and Node at the time of this writing (2014-11-01). If they seem like they won't work for you, they most likely will not.

Installing Node on Arch is very frustrating when installing it through Pacman or Yaourt. By default, it installs it in /usr/bin. That's not cool when installing global node modules, such as Grunt or PM2. If you do, you'll be greeted with the following error code:

npm ERR! Error: EACCES

It's a horrible sight to see, especially when you don't have to use sudo when using the global flag installing node modules.

So, as a forewarning, do not install the nodejs AUR package. It's bad, mmkay? Now, on to the step-by-step instructions.

Step 1. RTFM

Read the steps on this wiki article. Take note of the build requirements.

  • GCC
  • Python 2.6 or 2.7 (We're using 2.7 for these instructions).
  • GNU Make
  • We're also going to be using the git package.

Step 2. Install Dependencies

Run the following:

$ pacman -S gcc python2 git make

Build these packages as you normally would.

Step 3. Install Node.js

Arch generally comes with the latest Python--I know mine did. Unfortunately, it's Python 3.x and we need 2.(6|7) to install Node properly. We will temporarily change the default python command to use python2 instead of python3. Run the following:

$ cd /usr/bin
$ ln -sf python2 python

This will make sure every instance of #!/usr/bin/env python in the build files use python2.

Next, cd into a directory you feel comfortable in, and run the following:

$ git clone https://github.com/joyent/node.git
$ git checkout v0.10.33 # Use the version you want to install
$ ./configure && make && sudo make install

Step 4. Rid of sudo

This should spit out a bunch of logging that you don't need to pay too much attention to. What you do need to take note of is that, by design, Node will be installed in /usr/local/bin/node, NPM will be installed in /usr/local/bin/npm, and your Node modules will be installed in /usr/local/lib/node_modules. This is great, since /usr/local is a directory that your user can own. Let's make that so by running the following:

$ chown -R $USER /usr/local/

Now we can install our Node modules globally without running sudo!

Step 5. Change Python Back

Now we need to revert that symlink change we made previously for Python. Run the following:

$ cd /usr/bin
$ ln -sf python3 python

Step 6. Inspecting Our Changes

Let's make sure we made successful changes. When you run the following commands, you should see the result in the comment.

$ which node # /usr/local/bin/node
$ which npm # /usr/local/bin/npm
$ which python # /usr/bin/python

Conclusion

Now you can start writing some sweet Node code :) I hope this article helped you out!