Welcome to nvm-windows Discussions! #565
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To get started, comment below with an introduction of yourself and tell us about what you do with this community. |
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Replies: 8 comments 24 replies
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Hi, I'm Corey. I created NVM for Windows to fill a gap in the Node community and make Windows developers first class citizens as Node evolved. It first started right before io.js split and merged back into Node. The project has grown alot since those days. NVM4W is one of the more popular projects I've released, with over 2.5M downloads (not all from Github). There have been some absolutely stellar contributors who have helped move this project forward over the years. I, and the community, owe them a debt of gratitude. I am hoping to use this discussion feature to help provide better progress updates, project intentions, goals, etc. I intend to close down the gitter channel in favor of this. I also hope to answer questions, starting.... now. Is this project dead? Absolutely not. I know it seems like it takes a long time for releases. There's no denying, the 1.1.8 release has been significantly delayed. The truth is I have had alot of life turbulence, both good and bad, and it has been incredibly hard to keep up. Over the last 18 months, I've been predominantly working on macOS, so it has been difficult to test changes. The DevOps process, installers, and even Go underwent major changes. I started work on Github Actions during the beta to facilitate faster releases, then Github changed from HCL to YAML, ditched the visual editor, and pretty much changed the way everything works. I was also hard at work on Fenix Web Server 3.0.0, a project that preceded this one and was in dire need of updates. The bottom line is I have been busy, and this project isn't exactly putting food on the table. Sponsorship has really only picked up meagerly in the last 2 months, and to date this project still operates at a loss (the code signing certificate costs more than the lifetime earnings of this project). That said, I am gradually coming up for air and finding time to notate new features, revisit old requests, etc. What is the holdup on forward progress? Currently, my focus is releasing Metadoc.io, a new startup I'm working on with @gbdrummer. We completed Y-Combinator Startup School earlier this year and have been working overtime to bring it to life. You can probably guess that our beachhead effort is Go documentation (yes, JS is high on the roadmap), and the NVM4W code base has been our test bed. The plan is to start work on environment management after Metadoc is released. We're hoping for a mid-September launch, but COVID has impacted our timeline and resources. We're still hopeful to release without much further delay. Once launched, I will have a chance to dedicate time to this project. When will 1.1.8 be released? 1.1.8 has been in the master branch for over a year, unreleased. While I have confidence it works well, I was attempting to get an automated testing system setup around the new version. There are many companies, CI/CD services, and others depending on this project, so releasing without proper testing would be a little reckless at this point. You can see the progression of usage here: The intention is to get 1.1.8 shipped after the Metadoc launch, then immediately enter maintenance mode. This will also be the point where I will start coding the successor effort, code named "rt". What is the future for this project? The current plan is to replace NVM4W with a successor, code-named "rt", which emphasizes "runtime management". This will, with 99% certainty, be both an open source and commercial effort. Don't worry, the features that are free and open source today will remain that way. Nobody will be taking anything away. In fact, this change will likely produce a significant number of new features (like cross-platform support) and make the project more accessible to developers. The planned commercial offerings are add-ons, focusing on greater productivity, awareness, collaboration, and team/organization needs. Go was originally selected for NVM4W so it could easily evolve to support macOS and Linux. The challenge with anything "not JavaScript" is the added difficulty it brings to a community of JavaScript developers. While the "rt" roadmap is not set in stone, there is a strong chance the open source utility will move to JavaScript. I've put effort into a project called author/shell, which was recently presented at OpenJS World 2020 back in June. This will likely evolve and be the basis of the "rt" CLI tool. We now have ways of packaging and deploying JS apps as small form binaries, which alleviates former concerns of relying on the presence of an existing runtime (i.e. needing Node to install Node never made sense). The commercial add-on would be closed source. I've always viewed version management as a small peekhole into a vastly bigger picture. However; to grow a project like this, it needs to be more than a side project. At this time, I believe a commercial venture is the fastest sustainable route to achieving this larger vision. Ask questions! Remember, I have alot going on above (as you can see above). However; I will try to answer questions here. I hope the NVM4W community uses this new discussion feature to help each other out. Please keep conversations about how to use the tool, npm, features, etc here. Use the issues for tracking bugs and technical problems. |
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Question: does nvm-windows do something that changes the way So I tried afterward installing node and npm on top of the version nvm installed using the msi from nodejs.com. (I crossed my fingers hoping it would just overwrite what was in the c:\program files\nodejs symlink without without actually deleting the symlink and recreating a directory). It seemed to work fine and now |
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Just to say thanks so much for your work on NVM-Windows. It has been very useful indeed. While I still like the speed and light weightness of Git 4 Windows bash with the native ports of some commands, I'm using WSL2 for more and more work. |
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Just an update on "rt": I finally got a new Windows computer and am in the process of configuring my dev environment for work on the next version. The basic plan is already mapped out, but not setup as a proper project on Github yet. There are still several tasks to finish before I can start coding features, but the process has started. |
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My development schedule did not go as planned this year, so I've made adjustments. First, NVM4W v1.1.8 will be released next week. I've merged 10 new PR's that resolve several long-standing issues and even add a few features. I didn't want to release this at this time, mostly because I cannot code-sign the application. The old certificates are expired and the cost is quite high for new certificates. However; Node 16.9.0 introduced corepack, which has new installation requirements. So, I will be releasing v1.1.8 without code signing the executable. I am still hoping this will be the last release of NVM4W (succeeded by rt), but there may be another maintenance release before rt is available. Development of rt is moving along, though the time I spend on it at this stage is still building experiments. |
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FYI, the link to author/shell has a typo. |
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Hi everyone, |
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Did they removed alias ? |
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Hi, I'm Corey.
I created NVM for Windows to fill a gap in the Node community and make Windows developers first class citizens as Node evolved. It first started right before io.js split and merged back into Node. The project has grown alot since those days.
NVM4W is one of the more popular projects I've released, with over 2.5M downloads (not all from Github). There have been some absolutely stellar contributors who have helped move this project forward over the years. I, and the community, owe them a debt of gratitude.
I am hoping to use this discussion feature to help provide better progress updates, project intentions, goals, etc. I intend to close down the gitter channel in favor of th…