npm installation not working under Debian Stretch

Question

I just tried to install node and npm on Debian Stretch. I installed node like decribed here.

After installing nodejs-legacy too I got the node command working but npm command still won't be found.

So, I tried to install it manually via apt-get install npm but it just tells me that it can't find the package. Next I tried the "Fancy Install (Unix)" from npm repository which fails with

    install npm@latest
fetching: https://registry.npmjs.org/npm/-/npm-5.5.1.tgz
module.js:327
    throw err;
    ^

Error: Cannot find module '/tmp/npm.1272/package/bin/read-package-json.js'
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:325:15)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:276:25)
    at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:441:10)
    at startup (node.js:140:18)
    at node.js:1043:3
added 1 package and removed 1 package in 0.45s
/usr/bin/npm -> /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js
/usr/bin/npx -> /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npx-cli.js
+ npm@5.5.1
updated 1 package in 1.21s
It worked

Although it creates the link for the npm command the links are broken. Does anyone an idea how I can get npm running?

One more thing: I have the visual studio code repositories in my sources.list which uses node too. Is it possible that that's a reason why it downloads a node package without npm when I do apt-get install -y nodejs?

Thanks in advance for every answer.

Answer 1

It seems as if it should be available in the npm package but there's a problem:

Error: Package not available in this suite

I read somewhere that it's deliberately not available because there are so many outstanding security issues (with the packaged version). I solved my problem without any "sudo run this script from the Internet" solutions like this:

cd /tmp/
wget  https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x
view  setup_8.x
echo 'deb https://deb.nodesource.com/node_8.x  stretch  main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodesource.list
wget -qO - https://deb.nodesource.com/gpgkey/nodesource.gpg.key | apt-key add -
apt update
apt install  nodejs

npm is installed as part of that nodejs package.

Answer 2

I have no idea why my tries from above did not work but for me installing nvm like described here and then performing nvm install node worked perfectly.

Answer 3

I solved the error about the missing read-package-json.js by using the latest install script from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/npm/npm/latest/scripts/install.sh. (Source: https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/18524#issuecomment-385369514).

After that you might run into an error about missing rimraf. At least for this there is a Debian Stretch package: apt install node-rimraf. For alternatives, see https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/18524 and https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/19105.

Finally, you might run into an error about missing make if you don't have that installed yet, so apt install make.