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

Nvm paths have changed since the accepted answer, so if you want to use a more up-to-date nvm version, you need to make a few changes. Also, it is not necessary to remap sh to make it work:

ENV NVM_DIR /usr/local/nvm
RUN curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.33.1/install.sh | bash
ENV NODE_VERSION v7.9.0
RUN /bin/bash -c "source $NVM_DIR/nvm.sh && nvm install $NODE_VERSION && nvm use --delete-prefix $NODE_VERSION"

ENV NODE_PATH $NVM_DIR/versions/node/$NODE_VERSION/lib/node_modules
ENV PATH      $NVM_DIR/versions/node/$NODE_VERSION/bin:$PATH

Not sure if you will need the --delete-prefix option on the nvm use - I did, but that may be something strange about my base image.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

Took me an hour or two to figure out the cleanest way to do it. --login doesn't seem to execute .bashrc so you have to supply -i to launch it in interactive mode. This causes Docker to yell at you for a bit so I only launch this way for the installation, then reset to my standard shell.

# Installing Node
SHELL ["/bin/bash", "--login", "-i", "-c"]
RUN curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.35.2/install.sh | bash
RUN source /root/.bashrc && nvm install 12.14.1
SHELL ["/bin/bash", "--login", "-c"]

Answer 4

I must begin with the fact that I searched all over to get a working example of nvm inside docker and I found none. Even the answers in this thread did not work.

So, I spent quite some time and came up with one that works:

# install dependencies
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
      curl \
      npm \
      nodejs \
      git;

# compatibility fix for node on ubuntu
RUN ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node;

# install nvm
RUN curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.24.1/install.sh | sh;

# invoke nvm to install node
RUN cp -f ~/.nvm/nvm.sh ~/.nvm/nvm-tmp.sh; \
    echo "nvm install 0.12.2; nvm alias default 0.12.2" >> ~/.nvm/nvm-tmp.sh; \
    sh ~/.nvm/nvm-tmp.sh; \
    rm ~/.nvm/nvm-tmp.sh;

Notice how I have installed nodejs via apt-get as well. I found that some packages don't get installed inside docker unless this is done.

Answer 5

Just one answer put the curl installation but does not work the entire Dockerfile

Here my Dockerfile ready to copy/paste in which I install latest nvm 2020 version with Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS

FROM ubuntu

RUN apt-get update
RUN echo "y" | apt-get install curl
ENV NVM_DIR /usr/local/nvm
RUN mkdir -p /usr/local/nvm
RUN curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.35.3/install.sh | bash
ENV NODE_VERSION v10
RUN /bin/bash -c "source $NVM_DIR/nvm.sh && nvm install $NODE_VERSION && nvm use --delete-prefix $NODE_VERSION"

ENV NODE_PATH $NVM_DIR/versions/node/$NODE_VERSION/lib/node_modules
ENV PATH      $NVM_DIR/versions/node/$NODE_VERSION/bin:$PATH

Answer 6

To help everyone that are looking for a way to install the Node.js with NVM on Ubuntu (last version), I made the dockerfile below. I'm using the last version of Docker, Ubuntu, Node.js and the NVM is working properly (the $PATH was fixed). I'm using this in a production environment.

$ docker info \
Server Version: 1.9.1
Kernel Version: 4.1.13-boot2docker
Operating System: Boot2Docker 1.9.1 (TCL 6.4.1); master : cef800b - Fri Nov 20 19:33:59 UTC 2015

Node.js Version: stable 4.2.4 LTS
Ubuntu Version: 14.04.3

dockerfile:

FROM ubuntu:14.04.3

# Replace shell with bash so we can source files
RUN rm /bin/sh && ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh

# make sure apt is up to date
RUN apt-get update --fix-missing
RUN apt-get install -y curl
RUN apt-get install -y build-essential libssl-dev

ENV NVM_DIR /usr/local/nvm
ENV NODE_VERSION 4.2.4

# Install nvm with node and npm
RUN curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.30.1/install.sh | bash \
    && source $NVM_DIR/nvm.sh \
    && nvm install $NODE_VERSION \
    && nvm alias default $NODE_VERSION \
    && nvm use default

ENV NODE_PATH $NVM_DIR/v$NODE_VERSION/lib/node_modules
ENV PATH      $NVM_DIR/versions/node/v$NODE_VERSION/bin:$PATH

RUN mkdir /usr/app
RUN mkdir /usr/app/log

WORKDIR /usr/app

# log dir
VOLUME /usr/app/log

# Bundle app source
COPY . /usr/app
# Install app dependencies
RUN npm install

EXPOSE  3000
CMD ["node", "server.js"]