How can I uninstall or upgrade my old node.js version?

Question

some time ago I have installed node.js on my Ubuntu system. with the following steps (dump of my history):

309  git clone git://github.com/joyent/node.git 310  cd node/ 311  ./configure  312  make 313  ls -l 314  node 315  sudo make install 

My Version is v0.3.2-pre.

Please, is there a clean way to get a new version by uninstall/install or upgrade? I have not much experience with make or git.

Thanks

Answer 1

1. Install npm using curl (or wget)
   curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh
2. Install n using npm
   npm install -g n
3. Install the latest version of node using n
   n latest

n is a node version manager. It does all the work for you. It installs and switches to the version you specify, or just switches if you already have it installed.

Note: If you're having trouble installing stuff due to permissions, don't use sudo. Enter this command once to set your user account as the owner of the /usr/local/ directory, so that you can just issue normal commands in there without sudo. It's a more sane alternative.

sudo chown -R $USER /usr/local 

Answer 2

Do the exact same thing again. The new binary will be copied over the old one.

• git clone creates a copy of git repository node's source code is in
• cd node/ changes directory to the one you just created with those files
• ./configure checks for dependencies and creates a makefile
• make executes that makefile, which results in compiling the source code into binary executable(s), libraries and any other outputs
• ls -l lists the files in the current directory
• node runs the node binary executable you just compiled from source, to ensure the compilation was successful
• sudo make install copies the files you just created from the current directory to their permanent homes, /usr/local/bin and such

The last step overwrites whatever's already there with what you just built.