Tag: nvm

NVM is a version manager for node that makes using specific versions of Node a breeze. I prefer to use it on my development machine instead of system wide node as it gives much more control with almost no added complexity.

Once you install it , it adds the following snippet to your .bashrc :

export NVM_DIR="/Users/zaro/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && . "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm

and everything just works 🙂

Except that on my laptop this adds 1-2 seconds of start up time to each new shell I open. It’s a bit of annoyance and I don’t need it in every terminal session I start, so I though maybe there will be a way to load it on demand.

After fiddling a bit with it I replaced the NVM snippet with the following:

nvm() {
    unset -f nvm
    export NVM_DIR=~/.nvm
    [ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && . "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
    nvm "$@"
}

node() {
    unset -f node
    export NVM_DIR=~/.nvm
    [ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && . "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
    node "$@"
}

npm() {
    unset -f npm
    export NVM_DIR=~/.nvm
    [ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && . "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
    npm "$@"
}

Now nvm, node and npm are  loaded on their first invocation, posing no start up time penalty for the shells that aren’t going to use them at all.

Edit: Thanks to jonknapp’s suggestion, now the snippet is more copy paste friendly.

Edit: fl0w_io made a standalone script out of it to include in .bashrc

Edit: sscotth made a version that will register all your globally installed modules