Adding Path variables for Node.js and npm

I broke the LinkedIn Node.js group discussion board otherwise I would have put this information there. I have finally worked out what the problem is with the path set up when trying to use Node Package Manager (npm) on the IBM i. The problem started with how I was trying to set the PATH variable in the shell, it appears that the BASH shell does not like the ‘export PATH=$PATH:/newpath’ request, it always sends back an invalid identifier message and does not set the PATH variable. After some Google work I found a number of forum posts where others had fallen into this trap, the problem is the way that BASH interprets the $variable settings.

I am not really clear on why the BASH shell is the problem but I did find a work around. If you set the variable and then export it the variable is correctly set for the environment, so ‘PATH=$PATH:/newpath’ and then ‘export PATH’ works just fine. This was not the end of it though because even though I has set the PATH variable correctly for the environment the npm requests did not run and complained about libstdc++.a not being found! Running the request in the ../Node/bin directory did allow the request to run correctly but being outside that directory did not. I did some more research and found that the way to get around this is to set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH so it picks up the objects in the ../Node/bin library. This is done as above by setting the variable and then exporting it ie: ‘LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/QOpenSys/QIBM/ProdData/Node/bin’ and then ‘export LD_LIBRARY_PATH’

I will now build a .profile in my home directory to set these on starting the terminal session..

Chris…

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