Node.js plugin for asdf version manager

The plugin properly validates OpenPGP signatures to check the authenticity of the package. Requires gpg to be available during package installs

Requirements

• (MacOS) GNU Core Utils - brew install coreutils

Install

asdf plugin-add nodejs https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-nodejs.git

# Imports Node.js release team's OpenPGP keys to main keyring
bash ~/.asdf/plugins/nodejs/bin/import-release-team-keyring

Use

Check asdf readme for instructions on how to install & manage versions of Node.js.

When installing Node.js using asdf install, you can pass custom configure options with the following env vars:

• NODEJS_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS - use only your configure options
• NODEJS_EXTRA_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS - append these configure options along with ones that this plugin already uses
• NODEJS_CHECK_SIGNATURES - strict is default. Other values are no and yes. Checks downloads against OpenPGP signatures from the Node.js release team.

.nvmrc file

asdf uses the .tool-versions for auto-switching between software versions. To ease migration, you can have it read an existing .nvmrc file to find out what version of Node.js should be used. To do this, add the following to $HOME/.asdfrc:

legacy_version_file = yes

Using a dedicated OpenPGP keyring

The gpg commands above imports the OpenPGP public keys in your main OpenPGP keyring. However, you can also use a dedicated keyring in order to mitigate this issue.

To use a dedicated keyring, prepare the dedicated keyring and set it as the default keyring in the current shell:

export GNUPGHOME="$HOME/.asdf/keyrings/nodejs" && mkdir -p "$GNUPGHOME" && chmod 0700 "$GNUPGHOME"

# Imports Node.js release team's OpenPGP keys to the keyring
bash ~/.asdf/plugins/nodejs/bin/import-release-team-keyring

Related notes

• Verifying Node.js Binaries.
• Only versions >=0.10.0 are checked. Before that version, signatures for SHA2-256 hashes might not be provided (and can not be installed with the strict setting for that reason).

This behavior can be influenced by the NODEJS_CHECK_SIGNATURES env var which supports the following options:

• strict - (default): Check signatures/checksums and don’t operate on package versions which did not provide signatures/checksums properly (< 0.10.0).
• no - Do not check signatures/checksums
• yes- Check signatures/checksums if they should be present (enforced for >= 0.10.0)