Creating a node virtual environment

So as I delve into different react tutorials I will encounter multiple versions of node, which means that to follow along with each tutorial I should make sure my local environment (including node) matches that used in the tutorial to avoid errors caused by incompatible versions. Hmm.. this means uninstalling the version of node that I have installed and installing the one specified in the tutorial. What if I want to use different versions of node at the same time to work on two different projects or to follow along with different tutorials that each use different node versions, what to do then?

A solution that works for me is using nodeenv which is a tool to create nodejs virtual environments, this enables me to work on different projects each using different versions of node.

First step: Create a virtual environment using pipenv

Pipenv makes it super easy to manage virtual environments the process is as follows

mkdir projectFolder && cd projectFolder
pipenv shell 
pipenv install nodeenv

With these commands, you have sucessfuly created a virtual environment and downloaded nodeenv, time to install an isolated instance of nodejs in the environment

Second Step: Install a specific version of nodeenv

You can install node in a subdirectory and then activate it using the command

nodeenv nodefolder

acctivate the node folder to use node

nodefolder/bin/activate

check the node version using the command

node -v

By default not including the node version will install the latest version so the command node -v will indicate the latest version of node

Instead of creating a folder in which to install node, you can also bind the node environment and the pre existing environment created by pipenv using the command

nodeenv -p

to deactivate the node environment use deactivate_node

Install a specific version of node

In this specific instance I want to install node version v10.14.1 and bind it to the pre-existing environment. The command that i use is:

Assuming that we have created a folder and activated a virtual environment using pipenv shell inside it and installed nodeenv

nodeenv --node=10.14.1 -p

Check that the environment has installed sucessfully using the command node -v it should output v10.14.1

If you want to use the isolated version of node that you installed, navigate to the folder in terminal and activate the virtual environment using the command pipenv shell if you installed node using the command nodeenv -p it should already be activated, you can check by typing node -v which will display the version of node.

The beauty of installing an isolated instance of node using nodeenv and pipenv is that you can install different versions of node without creating conflicts. This is especially handy if you have the latest version of node on your computer but come across a legacy project that only works with an older version of node. Nodeenv allows you to create an isolated virtual environment into which you can install the exact version of nodejs you need that does not conflict with your pre-existing node installations.

for more details on nodeenv check out this link [pypi.org/project/nodeenv/]