Install Node and Angular on Linux and Docker

• Install nodejs and Angular on Linux Ubuntu / Mint
• Nodejs ... don't apt install
  • Nvm to the rescue
• Install Angular
• Installing NVM inside an Ubuntu Docker

Install nodejs and Angular on Linux Ubuntu / Mint

I'm setting up an Ubuntu (22.x) / Linux Mint laptop for personal development.
Here some notes about the setup of node.js and Angular.

Nodejs ... don't apt install

If I try to type node in the terminal, I receive the suggestion to install the package nodejs, this is an ultra old package. The current stable node version is 20, the version offered by the system is 12!

marco@x11-6:~$ apt show nodejs 
Package: nodejs 
Version: 12.22.9~dfsg-1ubuntu3.2 

Nvm to the rescue

nvm is a node package manager, this is the recommended solution to manage node not only on Linux but on MacOs and Windows too.

A great feature of nvm is that you can install multiple versions of node and easily switch between them.

To install nvm you can follow the instructions on GitHub or
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.7/install.sh | bash

If your machine or container doesn't have curl you can use wget:
wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.7/install.sh | bash

To install the version 20 of node we can simply type:

nvm install 20

/# nvm install 20 
Downloading and installing node v20.10.0... 
Downloading https://nodejs.org/dist/v20.10.0/node-v20.10.0-linux-x64.tar.gz... 
############################################################################################################### 100.0% 
Computing checksum with sha256sum 
Checksums matched! 
Now using node v20.10.0 (npm v10.2.3) 
Creating default alias: default -> 20 (-> v20.10.0) 

You can check their documentation to see the other features.

Install Angular

Now that we have node and npm we can install Angular. If you have only to build a simple project you don't have to install Angular globally.

In the most common cases the commands that you will use more frequently are npm install and ng build. npm comes with the install of node, to install ng (globally) you have to npm install -g @angular/cli

To install ng we need to install @angular/cli with the global flag. npm install -g @angular/cli

Installing NVM inside an Ubuntu Docker

I tried to reproduce the installation of node and nvm inside Ubuntu. It has been more challenging that initally thought because Docker doesn't maintaint the context between commands.

# We use the official Ubuntu base image to install NVM 
FROM ubuntu:latest 
 
# Set the Node.js version to be installed 
ENV NODE_VERSION 20 
 
# Set the environment variable for NVM directory 
ENV NVM_DIR /usr/local/nvm 
 
# Update the package lists and install curl 
RUN apt-get update \ 
    && apt-get install -y curl \ 
    && apt-get -y autoclean 
 
# Create a directory for NVM 
RUN mkdir /usr/local/nvm 
 
# Download and run the NVM installation script 
RUN curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.1/install.sh | bash \ 
    # Activate NVM 
    && . ${NVM_DIR}/nvm.sh \   
    # Install Node.js 
    && nvm install ${NODE_VERSION} \ 
    # Set Node.js as the default version 
    && nvm alias default ${NODE_VERSION} \  
    && nvm use default 
 
# Set environment variables for Node.js 
ENV NODE_PATH $NVM_DIR/v$NODE_VERSION/lib/node_modules 
ENV PATH $NVM_DIR/versions/node/v$NODE_VERSION/bin:$PATH 
 
# Set the default command to run when the container starts 
CMD ["bash"] 

After building and running the container you can test that node 20 is correctly installed.