Upgrade Node with NVM and migrate installed global node modules

June 9, 2020

Since i use nvm, upgrading to latest LTS version (v12.18.0 (npm v6.14.4) as of this writing) is simple

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nvm install --lts
nvm use --lts

But i have plenty of global modules installed that i do not want to have to manually re-install again for the updated version. So I actually used the following command to install latest LTS, use it, and also re-install global node modules from the previous version..

To be clear, it will re-install global modules, instead of copying them over from old version directory (which i was expecting)

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# migrate packages from old version without re-installing them
# https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm#migrating-global-packages-while-installing
nvm install lts/* --reinstall-packages-from=default --latest-npm

You can also pass a specific version to --reinstall-packages-from=. For example

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nvm install lts/* --reinstall-packages-from=10.15.3 --latest-npm

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nvm install 12.18.0 --reinstall-packages-from=10.15.3 --latest-npm

The --latest-npm, if you explicitly specify it, also updates the npm version for the packages you're migrating. It wasn't needed in my case..

Lastly, set the new LTS version we just installed as the new default Node version. Otherwise it'll keep using the old default version every time you restart Terminal. I found that out when my build failed because of Node version incompatibility..

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# Set 12.18.0 (or another version) as default
nvm alias default 12.18.0

# or
nvm alias default lts/*

You can see all versions and defaults with:

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nvm list

If you still keep getting the old Node version, check your ~/.bashrc. I had a PATH value added that was referencing old Node version. Removing that fixed everything