Behind the scenes, `asdf-nodejs` utilizes [`node-build`](https://github.com/nodenv/node-build) to install pre-compiled binaries and compile from source if necessary. You can check its [README](https://github.com/nodenv/node-build/blob/master/README.md) for additional settings and some troubleshooting.
When compiling a version from source, you are going to need to install [all requirements for compiling Node.js](https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/BUILDING.md#building-nodejs-on-supported-platforms) (be advised that different versions might require different configurations). That being said, `node-build` does a great job at handling edge cases and compilations rarely need a deep investigation.
`node-build` already has a [handful of settings](https://github.com/nodenv/node-build#custom-build-configuration), in additional to that `asdf-nodejs` has a few extra configuration variables:
-`ASDF_NODEJS_NODEBUILD_HOME`: Home for the node-build installation, defaults to `$ASDF_DIR/plugins/nodejs/.node-build`, you can install it in another place or share it with your system
-`ASDF_NODEJS_CONCURRENCY`: How many jobs should be used in compilation. Defaults to half the computer cores
-`NODEJS_ORG_MIRROR`: (Legacy) overrides the default mirror used for downloading the distibutions, alternative to the `NODE_BUILD_MIRROR_URL` node-build env var
asdf uses a `.tool-versions` file for auto-switching between software versions. To ease migration, you can have it read an existing `.nvmrc` or `.node-version` file to find out what version of Node.js should be used. To do this, add the following to `$HOME/.asdfrc`:
> **NOTE**: Partial versions and codenames only work for legacy version files: `.node-version` and `.nvmrc`.
### Default npm Packages
`asdf-nodejs` can automatically install a set of default set of npm package right after installing a Node.js version. To enable this feature, provide a `$HOME/.default-npm-packages` file that lists one package per line, for example:
```
lodash
request
express
```
You can specify a non-default location of this file by setting a `ASDF_NPM_DEFAULT_PACKAGES_FILE` variable.
`node-build` has some additional variations aside from the versions listed in `asdf list-all nodejs` (chakracore/graalvm branches and some others). As of now, we weakly support these variations. In the sense that they are available for install and can be used in a `.tool-versions` file, but we don't list them as installation candidates nor give them full attention.
Some of them will work out of the box, and some will need a bit of investigation to get them built. We are planning in providing better support for these variations in the future.
_Note that this command only lists the current `node-build` definitions. You might want to [update the local `node-build` repository](#updating-node-build-definitions) before listing them._
### Manually updating node-build definitions
Every new node version needs to have a definition file in the `node-build` repository. `asdf-nodejs` already tries to update `node-build` on every new version installation, but if you want to update `node-build` manually for some reason we provide a command just for that:
In the past `asdf-nodejs` checked for signatures and integrity by querying live keyservers. `node-build`, on the other hand, checks integrity by precomputing checksums ahead of time and versioning them together with the instructions for building them, making the process a lot more streamlined.
### Resolving latest available LTS version in a script
This plugin adds a custom subcommand `asdf nodejs resolve lts`. If you want to know what is the latest available LTS major version number you can do this:
```sh
# Before checking for aliases, update nodebuild to check for newly releasead versions