Install a specific version

[hectcastro]

How would you recommend that someone use this repository to install a specific version of Node.js? Previously, I was attempting to pin the version number, but it looks like older versions of Node.js are being replaced with newer ones.

My goal is to use a specific version of Node.js, but then not update to the newest version until after some testing occurs.

[ggsddu7]

This is my question too

[rvagg]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PinningHowto might be the way to go, /etc/apt/preferences

This is something we're only looking at experimenting with ourselves now for our Docker images, we'll let you know if we come up with an approach we can recommend, but for now, have a look at that wiki link.

[zol]

+1 It would be great to keep old versions available in Packages rather than just the latest.

Unfortunately pinning doesn't help when needing to provision new VM's to match machines in the cluster that are running an older version of the package.

[tecto]

+1 for keeping old versions available in Packages.

Need to be able to apt-get install a specific version (0.10.33 in this case) across multiple servers and then pin the nodejs package to maintain consistency and separately test new versions before rollout.

Reference both https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PinningHowto and http://blog.andrewbeacock.com/2007/03/how-to-install-specific-version-of.html

[chrislea]

Okay, we certainly understand the need. Unfortunately, the reprepro utility which is part of our tooling for publishing the repositories can't do this, so we'll need to look into using something like aptly instead. I'll update here once we have something ready.

[chris-prince]

What about at least providing one repo per major release series (e.g. 0.10.x, 0.12.x)?

This is especially relevant now that Node 0.12 is out. I'd like to have control over when I make the switch from 0.10.x to 0.12.x. (But I am okay with receiving bugfix updates on the track that I'm on.)

I feel like SaltStack PPAs do this well. (https://launchpad.net/~saltstack) In their case:

• ppa:saltstack/salt gives the latest stable release
• ppa:saltstack/salt2014-7 gives the latest stable v2014.7.x release
• ppa:saltstack/salt2014-1 gives the latest stable v2014.1.x release
• etc.

Going forward, I would love to see something similar for Node (e.g. repos node, node-0.10, node-0.12).

[coen-hyde]

This is an issue for us as well. I've switched to compiling from source for the moment as i'm not sure when the nodesouce repo will switch to a 0.12.x release.

[awithersdd]

This really should be fixed, like many we test and lock to a specific release for production, we cannot have apt-get install nodejs=specific version fail because a new release was made nor can we accept every new release as if it were the one tested against.

[retrohacker]

https://github.com/nodesource/docker-node has examples of installing specific versions of node/iojs on debian/ubuntu using dpkg and fedora/centos using rpm. You may want to do gpg verification as well, like https://github.com/iojs/docker-iojs/blob/master/1.6/Dockerfile#L11

[shrop]

Using Meteor and definitely need a way to pin the nodejs since there are version requirements. Thanks for all you you folks do on this distro!

[heston]

Friendly bump on this. I just got bit by a version update causing all of our builds to fail. Very unexpected that previous versions are wiped from the repo when a new one is released.

[retrohacker]

@heston I believe they are only removed from the Release file. They are still in the repo: https://deb.nodesource.com/node_5.x/pool/main/n/nodejs/

Personally I am pinning against specific versions using wget [deb] && dpkg -i [deb].

[heston]

@wblankenship Thanks for the tip. Indeed, I see that the packages are still available, so that's an option. Without them being listed in the repo, it's not as easy to install with a package manager, though.

We're using salt to manage our package installations. It has great support for apt-get, but doesn't work as well with custom installation procedures.