How to install nvm in docker?

Question

I am in the process of building a new Docker image and I\'m looking to get NVM installed so I can manage nodejs.

Reading the docs on how to install NVM they mention

Answer 1

A key difference between the attempt to get the nvm command in the question:

RUN bash -l -c "source /root/.bashrc"

which doesn't work and the attempt to do the same in the accepted answer:

source $NVM_DIR/nvm.sh

Is that the second version sources the nvm.sh script directly, whereas the original tries to do it via the .bashrc file.

The .bashrc file has a line in it early on which exits if it's being run in a non interactive shell:

# If not running interactively, don't do anything
case $- in
    *i*) ;;
    *) return;;
esac

So it never gets to the bit where it would have sourced nvm.sh which actually puts the nvm command in your shell.

I wouldn't be surprised if docker is running this stuff in a non interactive shell. This hadn't been explicitly pointed out, so I thought I would mention it as it's what caught me out when I was doing something similar with vagrant.