ability to install nodejs versions without npm?

[jasisk]

I'm not entirely sure how the api would look to support this but I'm curious if it is possible to optionally install nodejs versions without npm.

This would enable two things, from what I can tell:

1. allow managing npm versions with corepack: right now, the corepack shim fails to install when attempting to enable for npm (corepack enable npm) from a node/corepack version managed by rtx.
2. allow managing npm from a different global npm store: setting a prefix in an .npmrc file allows you to move your global npm store to something like, ~/.npm-global, allowing globally install modules to persist across versions (including npm itself).

[jdx]

npm comes included in the official tarballs, so it's not really possible to not include it, however I think the idea of specifying alternate npm/package manager locations/versions does make sense. I think that would make more sense as an override rather than simply not including npm though

[jasisk]

Makes sense to me.

If I might suggest one thing to consider that would address point (1): one difference between the shipped tarball and the rtx installation is that the npm script is a symlink in the tarball but the real file in rtx. This prevents corepack from being able to replace the npm symlink. Could a middle-ground be to leave the symlink in place, similar to that for npx?

[jdx]

That's done to shim npm so that it automatically creates shims when running npm i -g. I think we'll need a different solution to that problem before we can make it compatible with corepack. I suspect more people rely on the auto-shimming than want to use corepack.

[jdx]

perhaps what I could do is modify the npm cli directly rather than putting a shim in front of it. Or maybe I can make it a symlink to a shim instead of a shim directly (if that works with corepack, dunno)

[jasisk]

Ack. Didn't look at the contents of the npm file before commenting. 🤦
You're absolutely right—the corepack shim is in conflict with the rtx shim. So it could be an either / or deal (either you don't corepack enable npm and you get rtx auto-shimming, or enable npm and lose rtx auto-shimming) but I can totally see if this is too confusing or inconsistent to want to implement.