Node Version Manager (NVM) installation guide and cheatsheet

I am currently in the process of learning React via the excellent "Learn React for free" course from Scrimba and am video journalling the process on my YouTube channel.

The lesson I am working on at the moment involves installing the latest version of Node.JS, Node Package Manager, and something called Node Version Manager (NVM). NVM is a tool used to manage multiple active Node.JS versions and it makes switching between versions and upgrading to the latest, very easy.

I don't profess to be an expert in this by any stretch of the imagination but just wanted to log down how I got it successfully installed and also to note down all the key terminal commands that you need need to manage your node versions with it.

NVM installation guide

The installation instruction for the latest version of NVM can be found on the NVM Github page. I also found this video from Dev Cafe useful when explaining what NVM is and how to install and use it How to install and use Node Version Manager (NVM)

Here is a video of me setting up a local React environment and installing and using NVM in the process:

NVM cheatsheet

Here are a few key commands to use with NVM.

nvm install node                        # install the latest version of node
nvm ls-remote                 # lists all of the available versions of NodeJs & iojs
nvm ls                        # list locally installed version
nvm install 0.12.3            # install the version 0.12.3 (see ls-remote for available options)
nvm uninstall 0.12.3            # uninstall the version 0.12.3 
nvm use 0.12.3                # switch to and use the installed 0.12.3 version
nvm which 0.12.2              # the path to the installed node version
nvm current                   # what is the current installed nvm version
nvm alias default 0.10.32     # set the default node to the installed 0.10.32 version
nvm --help                    # the help documents