Depending on what platform or features you require, the build process may differ slightly. After you've successfully built a binary, running the test suite to validate that the binary works as intended is a good next step.
If you consistently can reproduce a test failure, search for it in the Node.js issue tracker or file a new issue.
This list of supported platforms is current as of the branch / release to which it is attached.
Node.js relies on V8 and libuv. Therefore, we adopt a subset of their supported platforms.
Support is divided into three tiers:
- Tier 1: Full test coverage and maintenance by the Node.js core team and the broader community.
- Tier 2: Full test coverage but more limited maintenance, often provided by the vendor of the platform.
- Experimental: May not compile reliably or test suite may not pass. These are often working to be promoted to Tier 2 but are not quite ready. There is at least one individual actively providing maintenance and the team is striving to broaden quality and reliability of support.
System | Support type | Version | Architectures | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
GNU/Linux | Tier 1 | kernel >= 2.6.18, glibc >= 2.5 | x86, x64, arm, arm64 | |
macOS | Tier 1 | >= 10.10 | x64 | |
Windows | Tier 1 | >= Windows 7 or >= Windows2008R2 | x86, x64 | |
SmartOS | Tier 2 | >= 15 < 16.4 | x86, x64 | see note1 |
FreeBSD | Tier 2 | >= 10 | x64 | |
GNU/Linux | Tier 2 | kernel >= 4.2.0, glibc >= 2.19 | ppc64be | |
GNU/Linux | Tier 2 | kernel >= 3.13.0, glibc >= 2.19 | ppc64le | |
AIX | Tier 2 | >= 6.1 TL09 | ppc64be | |
GNU/Linux | Tier 2 | kernel >= 3.10, glibc >= 2.17 | s390x | |
macOS | Experimental | >= 10.8 < 10.10 | x64 | no test coverage |
Linux (musl) | Experimental | musl >= 1.0 | x64 |
note1 - The gcc4.8-libs package needs to be installed, because node binaries have been built with GCC 4.8, for which runtime libraries are not installed by default. For these node versions, the recommended binaries are the ones available in pkgsrc, not the one available from nodejs.org. Note that the binaries downloaded from the pkgsrc repositories are not officially supported by the Node.js project, and instead are supported by Joyent. SmartOS images >= 16.4 are not supported because GCC 4.8 runtime libraries are not available in their pkgsrc repository
Depending on host platform, the selection of toolchains may vary.
- GCC 4.8.5 or newer
- Clang 3.4.1 or newer
- Building Node: Visual Studio 2015 or Visual C++ Build Tools 2015 or newer
- Building native add-ons: Visual Studio 2013 or Visual C++ Build Tools 2015 or newer
Prerequisites:
gcc
andg++
4.8.5 or newer, orclang
andclang++
3.4.1 or newer- Python 2.6 or 2.7
- GNU Make 3.81 or newer
On macOS, you will also need:
-
- You also need to install the
Command Line Tools
via Xcode. You can find this under the menuXcode -> Preferences -> Downloads
- This step will install
gcc
and the related toolchain containingmake
- You also need to install the
-
After building, you may want to setup firewall rules to avoid popups asking to accept incoming network connections when running tests:
$ sudo ./tools/macosx-firewall.sh
Running this script will add rules for the executable node
in the out
directory and the symbolic node
link in the project's root directory.
On FreeBSD and OpenBSD, you may also need:
- libexecinfo
To build Node.js:
$ ./configure
$ make -j4
Running make
with the -j4
flag will cause it to run 4 compilation jobs
concurrently which may significantly reduce build time. The number after -j
can be changed to best suit the number of processor cores on your machine. If
you run into problems running make
with concurrency, try running it without
the -j4
flag. See the
GNU Make Documentation
for more information.
Note that the above requires that python
resolve to Python 2.6 or 2.7
and not a newer version.
To run the tests:
$ make test
To run the npm test suite:
note: to run the suite on node v4 or earlier you must first
run make install
$ make test-npm
To build the documentation:
This will build Node.js first (if necessary) and then use it to build the docs:
$ make doc
If you have an existing Node.js you can build just the docs with:
$ NODE=/path/to/node make doc-only
To read the documentation:
$ man doc/node.1
To test if Node.js was built correctly:
$ ./node -e "console.log('Hello from Node.js ' + process.version)"
To install this version of Node.js into a system directory:
$ [sudo] make install
Prerequisites:
- Python 2.6 or 2.7
- One of:
- Visual C++ Build Tools
- Visual Studio 2015 Update 3, all editions including the Community edition (remember to select "Common Tools for Visual C++ 2015" feature during installation).
- Basic Unix tools required for some tests,
Git for Windows includes Git Bash
and tools which can be included in the global
PATH
.
> .\vcbuild
To run the tests:
> .\vcbuild test
To test if Node.js was built correctly:
> Release\node -e "console.log('Hello from Node.js', process.version)"
Although these instructions for building on Android are provided, please note that Android is not an officially supported platform at this time. Patches to improve the Android build are accepted. However, there is no testing on Android in the current continuous integration environment. The participation of people dedicated and determined to improve Android building, testing, and support is encouraged.
Be sure you have downloaded and extracted Android NDK before in a folder. Then run:
$ ./android-configure /path/to/your/android-ndk
$ make
Intl support is enabled by default, with English data only.
By default, only English data is included, but
the full Intl
(ECMA-402) APIs. It does not need to download
any dependencies to function. You can add full
data at runtime.
Note: more docs are on the node wiki.
With the --download=all
, this may download ICU if you don't have an
ICU in deps/icu
. (The embedded small-icu
included in the default
Node.js source does not include all locales.)
$ ./configure --with-intl=full-icu --download=all
> .\vcbuild full-icu download-all
The Intl
object will not be available, nor some other APIs such as
String.normalize
.
$ ./configure --without-intl
> .\vcbuild without-intl
$ pkg-config --modversion icu-i18n && ./configure --with-intl=system-icu
If you are cross compiling, your pkg-config
must be able to supply a path
that works for both your host and target environments.
You can find other ICU releases at
the ICU homepage.
Download the file named something like icu4c-**##.#**-src.tgz
(or
.zip
).
From an already-unpacked ICU:
$ ./configure --with-intl=[small-icu,full-icu] --with-icu-source=/path/to/icu
From a local ICU tarball:
$ ./configure --with-intl=[small-icu,full-icu] --with-icu-source=/path/to/icu.tgz
From a tarball URL:
$ ./configure --with-intl=full-icu --with-icu-source=http://url/to/icu.tgz
First unpack latest ICU to deps/icu
icu4c-##.#-src.tgz (or .zip
)
as deps/icu
(You'll have: deps/icu/source/...
)
> .\vcbuild full-icu
NOTE: Windows is not yet supported
It is possible to build Node.js with OpenSSL FIPS module.
Note: building in this way does not allow you to claim that the runtime is FIPS 140-2 validated. Instead you can indicate that the runtime uses a validated module. See the security policy page 60 for more details. In addition, the validation for the underlying module is only valid if it is deployed in accordance with its security policy. If you need FIPS validated cryptography it is recommended that you read both the security policy and user guide.
- Obtain a copy of openssl-fips-x.x.x.tar.gz.
To comply with the security policy you must ensure the path
through which you get the file complies with the requirements
for a "secure installation" as described in section 6.6 in
the user guide.
For evaluation/experimentation you can simply download and verify
openssl-fips-x.x.x.tar.gz
from https://www.openssl.org/source/ - Extract source to
openssl-fips
folder andcd openssl-fips
./config
make
make install
(NOTE: to comply with the security policy you must use the exact commands in steps 3-5 without any additional options as per Appendix A in the security policy. The only exception is that./config no-asm
can be used in place of./config
, and the FIPSDIR environment variable may be used to specify a non-standard install folder for the validated module, as per User Guide sections 4.2.1, 4.2.2, and 4.2.3.- Get into Node.js checkout folder
./configure --openssl-fips=/path/to/openssl-fips/installdir
For example on ubuntu 12 the installation directory was/usr/local/ssl/fips-2.0
- Build Node.js with
make -j
- Verify with
node -p "process.versions.openssl"
(for example1.0.2a-fips
)