Installing node with nave

Question

Can nodejs be installed via nave on your raspberry ?

Does node 0.10.x is working fine when installed this way ?

Answer 1

I have not used it on the pi, but there's a node binary in the raspbian repository:

» apt-cache show nodejs
Package: nodejs
Version: 0.6.19~dfsg1-6
Architecture: armhf
Maintainer: Debian Javascript Maintainers <[email protected]>

You should be able to install this very easily with apt-get install nodejs. The version is more than 6 months old, however.

If that isn't good enough, the node.js crew themselves appear to maintain more recent versions pre-compiled for the pi:

http://nodejs.org/dist/

Currently, the "latest" version links to 0.10.3, for which there is no pi binary. However, there's one for 0.10.2, and there's also one for 0.11.0. Nodejs follows an odd/even version numbering meaning the odd minor numbers are the development branch and the even ones the stable branch. Most people will want the stable.

Those tarballs contain a directory tree:

bin/
lib/
share/

You can unpack this into /usr/local/ on the pi. As root (or with sudo):

mv node-v0.10.2-linux-arm-pi.tar.gz /usr/local/src
tar -xzvf node-v0.10.2-linux-arm-pi.tar.gz
cd /usr/local/src/node-v0.10.2-linux-arm-pi
mv bin/* ../../bin/
mv lib/* ../../lib/

Check if you have a /usr/local/share/man/man1, and if not:

mkdir -p /usr/local/share/man/man1

Once that's there:

mv share/man/man1/* ../../share/man/man1/

Done. Check:

> file /usr/local/bin/node
node: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 3.1.10, not stripped

Should work, and it does; node on the command line acts as a javascript interpreter. If you've already used node on linux you are good to go. If not, you do not need to use a pi centric tutorial, the oodles that apply to linux generally should be fine. However, worth mentioning is this blog post about setting up a node server to run as a boot service, etc, specifically for the pi. Note that the author of that installs into a dedicated /opt/node directory and not /usr/local.

• Luc: I've used this link blog.rueedlinger.ch/2013/03/raspberry-pi-and-nodejs-basic-setup, it explains how to install the binaries.
• goldilocks: @Luc : Hey that's great, I've added some stuff about that.

Answer 2

Node.js can be installed on the Pi.

I am not sure about your second question though, I will edit this answer as more info comes up.

This is how you do it:

1. First we need to download the SSL dev libraries.

   sudo apt-get install libssl-dev
   

2. Now we need to download the latest stable release of Node.js

   wget http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.6.15/node-v0.6.15.tar.gz
   tar -xf node-v0.6.15.tar.gz
   cd node-v0.6.15
   export CCFLAGS='-march=armv6'
   export CXXFLAGS='-march=armv6'
   

3. We will use the nano text editor to edit a file.

   nano deps/v8/SConstruct
   

4. Edit lines 82 and 83 to match the following:

    'all': {
    'CCFLAGS': ['$DIALECTFLAGS', '$WARNINGFLAGS', '-march=armv6'],
    'CXXFLAGS': ['-fno-rtti', '-fno-exceptions', '-march=armv6'],
    },
   

5. Then comment out lines 157 - 162

6. Now comes the longest step.

    make
    make install
   

7. Lastly, do write this in the terminal:

   pacman -S nodejs
   

That should install node.js I have not tested it, but it should work. Here is my source.

• Luc: Thanks for this solution, I'll try it. I hope the automated installed using nave will be available soon on raspberry though :)
• goldilocks: Latest node is 0.10.x
• goldilocks: Also: Looks like node maintains binaries for the pi in that nodejs.org/dist repository, so you don't have to compile it from source (unless you want to).