Installing custom Node build

[arcanis]

I'm in the process of trying out a Node feature I'm working on. In this context, I'd like to try my build in "real life" by using nvm to install it and manage it (I don't plan to make nvm build from sources - just to use a preexisting tarball on install). Is nvm capable of this? Would that be a PR you'd consider?

[ljharb]

This seems like it’d be a pretty rare use case. Given that node lets you compile it pointing to a live folder on disk for core, allowing you to make changes without needing to recompile, what would be the advantage of having nvm install it?

nvm isn’t capable of this right now - even if you fake the tarball in cache i think it’d fail the checksum and then get overwritten - and I’m not sure it’s really worth the added complexity for something no more than a dozen people are ever likely to use :-/

[arcanis]

what would be the advantage of having nvm install it?

One feedback I got was that this would make it easier for others to test the feature I'm working on in isolation, thus helping to show that it would be viable if inside a regular build (to be clear, this is the proposal I'm referring to - it has various ramifications, and it's important to make sure that the user experience is well tested by a variety of people).

[andreialecu]

This feature would've also been helpful to use as an easy workaround for nodejs/node#37061 which is still pending an official release.

There has been a manual workaround posted there. Basically involves initiating nvm install then editing files in ~/.nvm/.cache/src/node-v15.8.0/files quickly before it gets to building them. Ref: nodejs/node#37061 (comment)

A way to implement this might be to allow overriding where the source is downloaded from, as a git repository. In that case people could provide a fork, or commit hash, or even just the nodejs master branch.