Installing nodejs 0.8 on CentOS 5.7

I recently had the task of installing NodeJS 0.8 on CentOS 5.7. I was expecting it to be an uphill battle, but it really wasn't too bad once I realised what needed doing. These are the instructions for installing the latest version (which was 0.8.18 at time of writing)

The first thing to do is to install some dependencies. I install a newer version of gcc to squeeze out every last drop of performance that we can get.

bash
sudo yum install gcc44 gcc44-c++ python26

Next, we set up our current session to use the new compilers:

bash
export CC=gcc44
export GCC=g++44

Then, it's time to patch node to use the python26 binary instead of the built in 2.4. You need to edit configure, Makefile and tools/install.py. If you'd prefer something a bit easier, here's a patch file that makes the required changes. Save it into a file, and cd into your extracted source folder and run patch -p1 < /path/to/this-file.path to apply it

diff
diff -uNr node-base/configure node-me/configure
--- node-base/configure 2012-12-12 17:44:54.000000000 -0500
+++ node-me/configure   2013-01-08 07:24:39.000000000 -0500
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-#!/usr/bin/env python
+#!/usr/bin/env python26
    import optparse
    import os
    import pprint
diff -uNr node-base/Makefile node-me/Makefile
--- node-base/Makefile  2012-12-12 17:44:54.000000000 -0500
+++ node-me/Makefile    2013-01-08 09:23:11.000000000 -0500
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
    -include config.mk
    BUILDTYPE ?= Release
-PYTHON ?= python
+PYTHON ?= python26
    DESTDIR ?=
    SIGN ?=
diff -uNr node-base/tools/install.py node-me/tools/install.py
--- node-base/tools/install.py  2012-12-12 17:44:54.000000000 -0500
+++ node-me/tools/install.py    2013-01-08 07:47:52.000000000 -0500
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-#!/usr/bin/env python
+#!/usr/bin/env python26
    import errno
    import json

Once that's been applied, you should get some output that looks similar to:

bash
[vagrant@www-dev node-v0.8.18]$ patch -p1 < centos57.patch
    patching file configure
    patching file Makefile
    patching file tools/install.py
    Hunk #1 succeeded at 1 with fuzz 1.

After that, it's a simple matter of running the following:

bash
make && sudo make install

You can check that it's installed fine by running the following commands. As of writing, you should get 0.8.18 and 1.2.2

bash
node -v; npm -v