Ubuntu – Is nvm not packaged in the ubuntu repositories

aptnodejspackage-management

$ sudo apt-get install nvm
…
E: Unable to locate package nvm

Installation instructions usually involve running random scripts from GitHub (curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.11.1/install.sh | bash), instead of using the well-known apt-get, yum or equivalent for other distributions.

Why isn't nvm packaged for Ubuntu?

I guess there must be a technical reason since nvm is a common piece of software, like a licensing issue or something like this, so I'm curious to know why it cannot be packaged. I searched online for a package and for a reason, but didn't get any useful result.

Best Answer

As per https://github.com/creationix/nvm/issues/761, it seems that the author(s) of nvm (the Node.JS Version Manager) strongly opposes to packaging nvm using distribution's standard package management tools, and prefer to roll their own solution.

This most likely didn't motivate people to package the tool.

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Ubuntu – Do apache2 upgrades remove and not re-install libapache2-mod-php5

It's probably that you are running the mpm-worker version of apache2, which does not like libapache2-mod-php5.

dpkg -l | grep apache2-mpm

You may wish to use apache2-mpm-prefork instead, which works better with mod_php5

Ubuntu – Why are softwares not packaged in a single file

The main reason that dependencies are not included with the program itself is so that components of the system can be easily updated.

Imagine one dependency is used by five different programs. If a security vulnerability is found in that dependency, only one copy has to be updated, rather than five copies.

To the user, it doesn't matter that multiple packages need to be installed - installing the one piece of software you want automatically installs its dependencies.

The main difference between .deb and .exe packaging is not that Ubuntu software is not published in a single file. The main difference is the whole concept of a software repository that contains packages, and that updates can be easily be provided from.

This can sometimes be problematic for computers without a direct internet connection. There are tools, like APTonCD, that help minimise these difficulties.

Best Answer

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