Node version manager

Why

When working on multiple front-end application you might get in the situation where you need multiple node versions in order to run those applications. Manually installing and uninstalling node is a time wasting task so another option should be available.

Options?

A well known version manager is nvm, unfortunately it has some drawbacks like:

• Admin permissions are required to change version (prompts are shown)
• Installing & using node versions requires exact version numbers (nvm use 16 does not work when you would like to use the latest version 16)
• Auto swapping node versions based on the folder you are in is not supported
• Global installed packages need to be re-installed after swapping versions

Volta has solved many of these issues and is available on windows & Unix (inc mac). That is why this is our primary choice when it comes to node version management.

Installation

WARNING

Before installing Volta, make sure you uninstall node and nvm when installed

Follow the installation instruction

Usage

Once the installation has finished you can start using Volta

Install node version

volta install node@22

Or

volta install node@22.14.0

More information about managing your toolchain can be found here

Add project config

In order to let Volta know what version your application requires you can use the following command in your projects root:

volta pin node@22

This will add the required Volta config to you package.json and lets Volta know what version he needs to use in that directory:

"volta": {
  "node": "22.14.0",
}

More details can be found in the docs here