npm install - javascript heap out of memory

Question

When running npm install -g ionic I get the following error:

FATAL ERROR: CALL_AND_RETRY_LAST Allocation failed - JavaScript heap out of

Answer 1

I flagged this as a duplicate, but in case anyone happens across it, I posted the modern solution to this problem over at https://stackoverflow.com/a/48895989/4200039:

As of v8.0 shipped August 2017, the NODE_OPTIONS environment variable exposes this configuration (see NODE_OPTIONS has landed in 8.x!). Per the article, only options whitelisted in the source are permitted, which includes "--max_old_space_size".

So I put in my .bashrc: export NODE_OPTIONS=--max_old_space_size=4096