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Building Node.js

Depending on what platform or features you need, the build process may differ. After you've built a binary, running the test suite to confirm that the binary works as intended is a good next step.

If you can reproduce a test failure, search for it in the Node.js issue tracker or file a new issue.

Table of contents

Supported platforms

This list of supported platforms is current as of the branch/release to which it belongs.

Input

Node.js relies on V8 and libuv. We adopt a subset of their supported platforms.

Strategy

There are three support tiers:

  • Tier 1: These platforms represent the majority of Node.js users. The Node.js Build Working Group maintains infrastructure for full test coverage. Test failures on tier 1 platforms will block releases.
  • Tier 2: These platforms represent smaller segments of the Node.js user base. The Node.js Build Working Group maintains infrastructure for full test coverage. Test failures on tier 2 platforms will block releases. Infrastructure issues may delay the release of binaries for these platforms.
  • Experimental: May not compile or test suite may not pass. The core team does not create releases for these platforms. Test failures on experimental platforms do not block releases. Contributions to improve support for these platforms are welcome.

Platforms may move between tiers between major release lines. The table below will reflect those changes.

Platform list

Node.js compilation/execution support depends on operating system, architecture, and libc version. The table below lists the support tier for each supported combination. A list of supported compile toolchains is also supplied for tier 1 platforms.

For production applications, run Node.js on supported platforms only.

Node.js does not support a platform version if a vendor has expired support for it. In other words, Node.js does not support running on End-of-Life (EoL) platforms. This is true regardless of entries in the table below.

Operating System Architectures Versions Support Type Notes
GNU/Linux x64 kernel >= 3.10, glibc >= 2.17 Tier 1 e.g. Ubuntu 16.04 1, Debian 9, EL 7 2
GNU/Linux x64 kernel >= 3.10, musl >= 1.1.19 Experimental e.g. Alpine 3.8
GNU/Linux x86 kernel >= 3.10, glibc >= 2.17 Experimental Downgraded as of Node.js 10
GNU/Linux arm64 kernel >= 4.5, glibc >= 2.17 Tier 1 e.g. Ubuntu 16.04, Debian 9, EL 7 3
GNU/Linux armv7 kernel >= 4.14, glibc >= 2.24 Tier 1 e.g. Ubuntu 18.04, Debian 9
GNU/Linux armv6 kernel >= 4.14, glibc >= 2.24 Experimental Downgraded as of Node.js 12
GNU/Linux ppc64le >=power8 kernel >= 3.10.0, glibc >= 2.17 Tier 2 e.g. Ubuntu 16.04 1, EL 7 2
GNU/Linux s390x kernel >= 3.10.0, glibc >= 2.17 Tier 2 e.g. EL 7 2
Windows x64, x86 (WoW64) >= Windows 8.1/2012 R2 Tier 1 4,5
Windows x86 (native) >= Windows 8.1/2012 R2 Tier 1 (running) / Experimental (compiling) 6
Windows x64, x86 Windows Server 2012 (not R2) Experimental
Windows arm64 >= Windows 10 Tier 2 (compiling) / Experimental (running)
macOS x64 >= 10.13 Tier 1
macOS arm64 >= 11 Experimental
SmartOS x64 >= 18 Tier 2
AIX ppc64be >=power7 >= 7.2 TL04 Tier 2
FreeBSD x64 >= 11 Experimental Downgraded as of Node.js 12 7

1: GCC 8 is not provided on the base platform. Users will need the Toolchain test builds PPA or similar to source a newer compiler.

2: GCC 8 is not provided on the base platform. Users will need the devtoolset-8 or later to source a newer compiler.

3: Older kernel versions may work for ARM64. However the Node.js test infrastructure only tests >= 4.5.

4: On Windows, running Node.js in Windows terminal emulators like mintty requires the usage of winpty for the tty channels to work (e.g. winpty node.exe script.js). In "Git bash" if you call the node shell alias (node without the .exe extension), winpty is used automatically.

5: The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is not supported, but the GNU/Linux build process and binaries should work. The community will only address issues that reproduce on native GNU/Linux systems. Issues that only reproduce on WSL should be reported in the WSL issue tracker. Running the Windows binary (node.exe) in WSL is not recommended. It will not work without workarounds such as stdio redirection.

6: Running Node.js on x86 Windows should work and binaries are provided. However, tests in our infrastructure only run on WoW64. Furthermore, compiling on x86 Windows is Experimental and may not be possible.

7: The default FreeBSD 12.0 compiler is Clang 6.0.1, but FreeBSD 12.1 upgrades to 8.0.1. Other Clang/LLVM versions are available via the system's package manager, including Clang 9.0.

Supported toolchains

Depending on the host platform, the selection of toolchains may vary.

Operating System Compiler Versions
Linux GCC >= 8.3
Windows Visual Studio >= 2019 with the Windows 10 SDK on a 64-bit host
macOS Xcode >= 11 (Apple LLVM >= 11)

Official binary platforms and toolchains

Binaries at https://nodejs.org/download/release/ are produced on:

Binary package Platform and Toolchain
aix-ppc64 AIX 7.2 TL04 on PPC64BE with GCC 8
darwin-x64 (and .pkg) macOS 10.15, Xcode Command Line Tools 11 with -mmacosx-version-min=10.13
linux-arm64 CentOS 7 with devtoolset-8 / GCC 8 8
linux-armv7l Cross-compiled on Ubuntu 18.04 x64 with custom GCC toolchain
linux-ppc64le CentOS 7 with devtoolset-8 / GCC 8 8
linux-s390x RHEL 7 with devtoolset-8 / GCC 8 8
linux-x64 CentOS 7 with devtoolset-8 / GCC 8 8
win-x64 and win-x86 Windows 2012 R2 (x64) with Visual Studio 2019

8: The Enterprise Linux devtoolset-8 allows us to compile binaries with GCC 8 but linked to the glibc and libstdc++ versions of the host platforms (CentOS 7 / RHEL 7). Therefore, binaries produced on these systems are compatible with glibc >= 2.17 and libstdc++ >= 6.0.20 (GLIBCXX_3.4.20). These are available on distributions natively supporting GCC 4.9, such as Ubuntu 14.04 and Debian 8.

OpenSSL asm support

OpenSSL-1.1.1 requires the following assembler version for use of asm support on x86_64 and ia32.

For use of AVX-512,

  • gas (GNU assembler) version 2.26 or higher
  • nasm version 2.11.8 or higher in Windows

AVX-512 is disabled for Skylake-X by OpenSSL-1.1.1.

For use of AVX2,

  • gas (GNU assembler) version 2.23 or higher
  • Xcode version 5.0 or higher
  • llvm version 3.3 or higher
  • nasm version 2.10 or higher in Windows

Please refer to https://www.openssl.org/docs/man1.1.1/man3/OPENSSL_ia32cap.html for details.

If compiling without one of the above, use configure with the --openssl-no-asm flag. Otherwise, configure will fail.

Previous versions of this document

Supported platforms and toolchains change with each major version of Node.js. This document is only valid for the current major version of Node.js. Consult previous versions of this document for older versions of Node.js:

Building Node.js on supported platforms

Note about Python 2 and Python 3

The Node.js project supports both Python 3 and Python 2 for building. If both are installed Python 3 will be used. If only Python 2 is available it will be used instead. When possible we recommend that you build and test with Python 3.

Unix and macOS

Unix prerequisites

  • gcc and g++ >= 8.3 or newer, or
  • GNU Make 3.81 or newer
  • Python (see note above)
    • Python 2.7
    • Python 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, and 3.8

Installation via Linux package manager can be achieved with:

  • Ubuntu, Debian: sudo apt-get install python g++ make
  • Fedora: sudo dnf install python gcc-c++ make
  • CentOS and RHEL: sudo yum install python gcc-c++ make
  • OpenSUSE: sudo zypper install python gcc-c++ make
  • Arch Linux, Manjaro: sudo pacman -S python gcc make

FreeBSD and OpenBSD users may also need to install libexecinfo.

Python 3 users may also need to install python3-distutils.

macOS prerequisites

  • Xcode Command Line Tools >= 11 for macOS
  • Python (see note above)
    • Python 2.7
    • Python 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, and 3.8

macOS users can install the Xcode Command Line Tools by running xcode-select --install. Alternatively, if you already have the full Xcode installed, you can find them under the menu Xcode -> Open Developer Tool -> More Developer Tools.... This step will install clang, clang++, and make.

Building Node.js

If the path to your build directory contains a space, the build will likely fail.

To build Node.js:

$ ./configure
$ make -j4

If you run into a No module named 'distutils.spawn' error when executing ./configure, please try python3 -m pip install --upgrade setuptools or sudo apt install python3-distutils -y. For more information, see nodejs#30189.

The -j4 option will cause make to run 4 simultaneous compilation jobs which may reduce build time. For more information, see the GNU Make Documentation.

The above requires that python resolves to a supported version of Python. See Prerequisites.

After building, setting up firewall rules can avoid popups asking to accept incoming network connections when running tests.

Running the following script on macOS will add the firewall rules for the executable node in the out directory and the symbolic node link in the project's root directory.

$ sudo ./tools/macos-firewall.sh

Installing Node.js

To install this version of Node.js into a system directory:

[sudo] make install

Running tests

To verify the build:

$ make test-only

At this point, you are ready to make code changes and re-run the tests.

If you are running tests before submitting a Pull Request, the recommended command is:

$ make -j4 test

make -j4 test does a full check on the codebase, including running linters and documentation tests.

Make sure the linter does not report any issues and that all tests pass. Please do not submit patches that fail either check.

If you want to run the linter without running tests, use make lint/vcbuild lint. It will lint JavaScript, C++, and Markdown files.

If you are updating tests and want to run tests in a single test file (e.g. test/parallel/test-stream2-transform.js):

$ python tools/test.py test/parallel/test-stream2-transform.js

You can execute the entire suite of tests for a given subsystem by providing the name of a subsystem:

$ python tools/test.py -J --mode=release child-process

If you want to check the other options, please refer to the help by using the --help option:

$ python tools/test.py --help

You can usually run tests directly with node:

$ ./node ./test/parallel/test-stream2-transform.js

Remember to recompile with make -j4 in between test runs if you change code in the lib or src directories.

The tests attempt to detect support for IPv6 and exclude IPv6 tests if appropriate. If your main interface has IPv6 addresses, then your loopback interface must also have '::1' enabled. For some default installations on Ubuntu that does not seem to be the case. To enable '::1' on the loopback interface on Ubuntu:

sudo sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6=0

You can use node-code-ide-configs to run/debug tests, if your IDE configs are present.

Running coverage

It's good practice to ensure any code you add or change is covered by tests. You can do so by running the test suite with coverage enabled:

$ ./configure --coverage
$ make coverage

A detailed coverage report will be written to coverage/index.html for JavaScript coverage and to coverage/cxxcoverage.html for C++ coverage.

If you only want to run the JavaScript tests then you do not need to run the first command (./configure --coverage). Run make coverage-run-js, to execute JavaScript tests independently of the C++ test suite:

$ make coverage-run-js

If you are updating tests and want to collect coverage for a single test file (e.g. test/parallel/test-stream2-transform.js):

$ make coverage-clean
$ NODE_V8_COVERAGE=coverage/tmp python tools/test.py test/parallel/test-stream2-transform.js
$ make coverage-report-js

You can collect coverage for the entire suite of tests for a given subsystem by providing the name of a subsystem:

$ make coverage-clean
$ NODE_V8_COVERAGE=coverage/tmp python tools/test.py -J --mode=release child-process
$ make coverage-report-js

The make coverage command downloads some tools to the project root directory. To clean up after generating the coverage reports:

$ make coverage-clean

Building the documentation

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 build, you can build just the docs with:

NODE=/path/to/node make doc-only

To read the man page:

man doc/node.1

If you prefer to read the full documentation in a browser, run the following.

make docserve

This will spin up a static file server and provide a URL to where you may browse the documentation locally.

If you're comfortable viewing the documentation using the program your operating system has associated with the default web browser, run the following.

make docopen

This will open a file URL to a one-page version of all the browsable HTML documents using the default browser.

To test if Node.js was built correctly:

./node -e "console.log('Hello from Node.js ' + process.version)"

Building a debug build

If you run into an issue where the information provided by the JS stack trace is not enough, or if you suspect the error happens outside of the JS VM, you can try to build a debug enabled binary:

$ ./configure --debug
$ make -j4

make with ./configure --debug generates two binaries, the regular release one in out/Release/node and a debug binary in out/Debug/node, only the release version is actually installed when you run make install.

To use the debug build with all the normal dependencies overwrite the release version in the install directory:

$ make install PREFIX=/opt/node-debug/
$ cp -a -f out/Debug/node /opt/node-debug/node

When using the debug binary, core dumps will be generated in case of crashes. These core dumps are useful for debugging when provided with the corresponding original debug binary and system information.

Reading the core dump requires gdb built on the same platform the core dump was captured on (i.e. 64-bit gdb for node built on a 64-bit system, Linux gdb for node built on Linux) otherwise you will get errors like not in executable format: File format not recognized.

Example of generating a backtrace from the core dump:

$ gdb /opt/node-debug/node core.node.8.1535359906
$ backtrace

Building an ASAN build

ASAN can help detect various memory related bugs. ASAN builds are currently only supported on linux. If you want to check it on Windows or macOS or you want a consistent toolchain on Linux, you can try Docker (using an image like gengjiawen/node-build:2020-02-14).

The --debug is not necessary and will slow down build and testing, but it can show clear stacktrace if ASAN hits an issue.

$  ./configure --debug --enable-asan && make -j4
$ make test-only

Speeding up frequent rebuilds when developing

If you plan to frequently rebuild Node.js, especially if using several branches, installing ccache can help to greatly reduce build times. Set up with:

$ sudo apt install ccache   # for Debian/Ubuntu, included in most Linux distros
$ ccache -o cache_dir=<tmp_dir>
$ ccache -o max_size=5.0G
$ export CC="ccache gcc"    # add to your .profile
$ export CXX="ccache g++"   # add to your .profile

This will allow for near-instantaneous rebuilds even when switching branches.

When modifying only the JS layer in lib, it is possible to externally load it without modifying the executable:

$ ./configure --node-builtin-modules-path $(pwd)

The resulting binary won't include any JS files and will try to load them from the specified directory. The JS debugger of Visual Studio Code supports this configuration since the November 2020 version and allows for setting breakpoints.

Troubleshooting Unix and macOS builds

Stale builds can sometimes result in file not found errors while building. This and some other problems can be resolved with make distclean. The distclean recipe aggressively removes build artifacts. You will need to build again (make -j4). Since all build artifacts have been removed, this rebuild may take a lot more time than previous builds. Additionally, distclean removes the file that stores the results of ./configure. If you ran ./configure with non-default options (such as --debug), you will need to run it again before invoking make -j4.

Windows

Prerequisites

Option 1: Manual install
  • Python 3.8
  • The "Desktop development with C++" workload from Visual Studio 2019 or the "Visual C++ build tools" workload from the Build Tools, with the default optional components
  • Basic Unix tools required for some tests, Git for Windows includes Git Bash and tools which can be included in the global PATH.
  • The NetWide Assembler, for OpenSSL assembler modules. If not installed in the default location, it needs to be manually added to PATH. A build with the openssl-no-asm option does not need this, nor does a build targeting ARM64 Windows.

Optional requirements to build the MSI installer package:

Optional requirements for compiling for Windows 10 on ARM (ARM64):

  • Visual Studio 15.9.0 or newer
  • Visual Studio optional components
    • Visual C++ compilers and libraries for ARM64
    • Visual C++ ATL for ARM64
  • Windows 10 SDK 10.0.17763.0 or newer
Option 2: Automated install with Boxstarter

A Boxstarter script can be used for easy setup of Windows systems with all the required prerequisites for Node.js development. This script will install the following Chocolatey packages:

To install Node.js prerequisites using Boxstarter WebLauncher, open https://boxstarter.org/package/nr/url?https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nodejs/node/HEAD/tools/bootstrap/windows_boxstarter with Internet Explorer or Edge browser on the target machine.

Alternatively, you can use PowerShell. Run those commands from an elevated PowerShell terminal:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Force
iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://boxstarter.org/bootstrapper.ps1'))
get-boxstarter -Force
Install-BoxstarterPackage https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nodejs/node/HEAD/tools/bootstrap/windows_boxstarter -DisableReboots

The entire installation using Boxstarter will take up approximately 10 GB of disk space.

Building Node.js

If the path to your build directory contains a space or a non-ASCII character, the build will likely fail.

> .\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)"

Android/Android-based devices (e.g. Firefox OS)

Android is not a supported platform. Patches to improve the Android build are welcome. 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 (ECMA-402) support

Intl support is enabled by default.

Build with full ICU support (all locales supported by ICU)

This is the default option.

Unix/macOS

$ ./configure --with-intl=full-icu

Windows

> .\vcbuild full-icu

Trimmed: small-icu (English only) support

In this configuration, 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.

Unix/macOS

$ ./configure --with-intl=small-icu

Windows

> .\vcbuild small-icu

Building without Intl support

The Intl object will not be available, nor some other APIs such as String.normalize.

Unix/macOS

$ ./configure --without-intl

Windows

> .\vcbuild without-intl

Use existing installed ICU (Unix/macOS only)

$ 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.

Build with a specific ICU

You can find other ICU releases at the ICU homepage. Download the file named something like icu4c-**##.#**-src.tgz (or .zip).

To check the minimum recommended ICU, run ./configure --help and see the help for the --with-icu-source option. A warning will be printed during configuration if the ICU version is too old.

Unix/macOS

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

Windows

First unpack latest ICU to deps/icu icu4c-##.#-src.tgz (or .zip) as deps/icu (You'll have: deps/icu/source/...)

> .\vcbuild full-icu

Building Node.js with FIPS-compliant OpenSSL

The current version of Node.js does not support FIPS.

Building Node.js with external core modules

It is possible to specify one or more JavaScript text files to be bundled in the binary as built-in modules when building Node.js.

Unix/macOS

This command will make /root/myModule.js available via require('/root/myModule') and ./myModule2.js available via require('myModule2').

$ ./configure --link-module '/root/myModule.js' --link-module './myModule2.js'

Windows

To make ./myModule.js available via require('myModule') and ./myModule2.js available via require('myModule2'):

> .\vcbuild link-module './myModule.js' link-module './myModule2.js'

Note for downstream distributors of Node.js

The Node.js ecosystem is reliant on ABI compatibility within a major release. To maintain ABI compatibility it is required that distributed builds of Node.js be built against the same version of dependencies, or similar versions that do not break their ABI compatibility, as those released by Node.js for any given NODE_MODULE_VERSION (located in src/node_version.h).

When Node.js is built (with an intention to distribute) with an ABI incompatible with the official Node.js builds (e.g. using a ABI incompatible version of a dependency), please reserve and use a custom NODE_MODULE_VERSION by opening a pull request against the registry available at https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/doc/abi_version_registry.json.