node: install npm using tarball.

[MikeMcQuaid]

Install npm to the expected location using the upstream tarball. This should make everyone happier.

This means Homebrew doesn't really manage npm any more but does install it. This is treated similarly to how we handle pip and means that npm can upgrade itself.

Closes #27479.

[chevcast]

Yes! This is the ideal solution I originally wanted. I'll be testing this for sure.

[MikeMcQuaid]

Ping @jacknagel @adamv @mistydemeo @asparagui for any objections.

[ebsen]

Apologies in advance for the noob question, but what needs done to make sure we've reached this setup in order to test?

I uninstalled npm (with npm uninstall npm -g) and node (with brew uninstall node, brew cleanup), reinstalled node (with a brew update, brew install node) and I'm still seeing the refusal to delete /usr/local/bin/npm.

I'm on Homebrew 43b7f5b.

[MikeMcQuaid]

git reset --hard origin/master
brew uninstall node
rm -rf $(brew --prefix)/lib/node_modules
brew pull 28075
brew install node --with-npm
npm update -g

[chevcast]

I followed your instructions to test the formula and so far so good, no issues.

I should mention that nothing breaks if npm update -g didn't actually have any updates for npm itself. I tried running npm install [email protected] which appeared to succeed, but when I then ran npm -v the version was still 1.4.6. Maybe npm can't downgrade itself? I'll keep doing npm updates with this new install for a while, hopefully I'll see an update come through successfully.

[MikeMcQuaid]

You can manually downgrade the URL in the formula to 1.4.5 and you'll see it upgrades to 1.4.6 on installation.

[MikeMcQuaid]

Gonna pull this relatively shortly if there are no problems/objections.

[chevcast]

Didn't think to do that. Thanks for the tip.

Edit: Confirmed! For the first time in a year I think node and npm are working as expected after installing from brew :D

Thanks for all your work on this. I can't express how appreciative my team and I are; makes things much simpler for us.

[ebsen]

Beautiful. Thanks for the additional instruction, @MikeMcQuaid. I would not have been able to pull that off otherwise.

[MikeMcQuaid]

Merged in f900829.

[rayshan]

Hi @MikeMcQuaid, is there a way to get on this formula without rm -rf $(brew --prefix)/lib/node_modules? I assume that'll remove all currently globally installed modules. Deleting and reinstalling npm isn't that bad, but reinstalling all is quite a bit to ask.

[mgol]

@rayshan

npm -g ls 2>/dev/null | grep '^[└├]' | grep -v npm | cut -f2- -d" " | cut -f1 -d@ | tr '\n' ' '

And you get a list to copy & later to paste to npm -g install. Easy-peasy.

[rayshan]

Cool that works, thanks @mzgol

[cvn]

Thanks @MikeMcQuaid!