Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment. It revolutionized the JavaScript world and made JavaScript the most popular development language among developers today (according to https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#most-popular-technologies). The Node ecosystem is the largest in the world, with over 800,000 packages (http://www.modulecounts.com/), and is managed by npm, the default package manager.
The JHipster CLI is a Node.js application and hence requires Node.js, to run, and many of the tools used in the generated application will also require Node.js:
- Check for Node.js by typing node -v in the Terminal. It should display a version number. Make sure that the version number is greater than 8.10 and corresponds to the latest LTS version of Node.js.
- If the command is not found or if you have a lower version of Node.js then you can visit the Node.js website (https://nodejs.org/en/download/) and follow the instructions to install the latest LTS version. Please note that non-LTS versions (current) might not be stable, and it is advised not to use them.
- Once installed, check the command in step 1 again to make sure. As Node.js alters the environment variables, you will have to open a new Terminal here.
- npm is automatically installed when you install Node.js. You can check this by running npm -v in the Terminal.
JHipster uses NPM by default, but if you prefer to use Yarn, that is possible as well. You can visit the Yarn website (https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/install) and follow the instructions to install Yarn.