can't brew install node

Question

I am trying to upgrade my node via homebrew but ran into a problem because I think I tried to download through the website. I am very new to terminal. I\'ve tried to search

Answer 1

brew postinstall node or brew link --overwrite node doesn't seem to help.

After several rounds of brew uninstall node and brew install node the following were the offending directories and files:

sudo rm -r /usr/local/include/node
sudo rm -r /usr/local/share/doc/node
sudo rm -r /usr/local/lib/node_modules
sudo rm /usr/local/lib/dtrace/node.d
sudo rm /usr/local/share/man/man1/node.1
sudo rm /usr/local/share/systemtap/tapset/node.stp

After the offending files are removed brew will do all the proper linking with permissions for you.

Likely permissions were set as root:wheel because of a past install with sudo or perhaps manual installation, etc.