Homebrew installs nvm but nvm can't be found afterwards?

Question

I\'m using homebrew and oh-my-zsh on a fresh OSX 10.10.1 install. I got nvm via homebrew and then attempted to run it but

Answer 1

There are TWO things you need to do. Follow the caveats shown after installing nvm via brew, and THEN you need to activate/reload the .bash_profile changes.

1. Run brew install nvm
2. Follow caveats shown in console, mine were as follows, yours MAY be different!:

Add the following to ~/.bash_profile or your desired shell configuration file:

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
. "$(brew --prefix nvm)/nvm.sh"

3. Run . ~/.bash_profile to apply the changes you made to your .bash_profile file

Answer 2

One possibility if brew was used is that the nvm may be unlinked, especially if it was installed by another MAC OS user.

In this case, execute:

brew link nvm

Answer 3

Did you follow the instructions listed in the caveats?

[~] brew info nvm
nvm: stable 0.20.0, HEAD
https://github.com/creationix/nvm
Not installed
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/nvm.rb
==> Caveats
Add the following to $HOME/.bashrc, $HOME/.zshrc, or your shell's
equivalent configuration file:

  source $(brew --prefix nvm)/nvm.sh

Node installs will be lost upon upgrading nvm. Add the following above
the source line to move install location and prevent this:

  export NVM_DIR=~/.nvm

Without the extra config it doesn't look like it will find NVM by default..

Answer 4

The reason you would need to reload your bash profiles or any other bash files might be because the command nvm may not be a program but a function that is defined and can only be used if the corresponding bash file is sourced.

On a system that I checked

which nvm 

does not work but

nvm list

does. This means that you can use the word "nvm" to invoke something. That something isn't a program. In the current case, it is a function which can be verified by

typeset -F | grep -P ' nvm$'

which outputs

declare -F nvm

which means nvm is a function, whose body can be inspected by doing

type -F nvm

Answer 5

To .bash_profile or .zshrc add:

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
source $(brew --prefix nvm)/nvm.sh

But a second line makes terminal initialization slow. Solution: https://gist.github.com/gfguthrie/9f9e3908745694c81330c01111a9d642

Answer 6

if you happen to be using fish shell, consider https://github.com/jorgebucaran/nvm.fish