Friday, November 30, 2012

Updated BitNami Node.JS 0.8.15 available

We are happy to announce a new version of BitNami Node.js Stack: 0.8.15. Compared with v0.6, this release brings significant improvements in performance, as well as cleanup in several core APIs and new debugging features. Some of them are the following:

- Node got a lot faster.
- Node got more stable.
- You can do stuff with file descriptors.
- The cluster module is much more awesome.
- The domain module was added.
- The repl is better.
- The build system changed from waf to gyp.
- and more!

As with all BitNami Stacks, this stack is available as a native installer for Linux and OS X, as a virtual machine or as an Amazon cloud image (AMI).

Getting started with BitNami Node.js

The BitNami Node.js Stack comes with a relocatable Node.js built with its dependencies, as well as NPM for manging modules and node-waf  to build native C++ extensions for Node.js. It also bundles a ready to use Redis server, a perfect complement to your Node.js web applications.



Once you have installed the stack, open the BitNami console. This console is a script to load the stack environment so you can run any command installed:

$ cd installdir
$ ./use_nodejs

You can use the node interactive shell:

$ node
> console.log('Hello world!')

Node.js comes with the npm package manager. This example shows how to install the express package globally. Express is a high performance, high class web development for Node.js inspired by Sinatra.

$ npm -g install express
$ npm -g list

Now you can create your own minimalistic project executing:

$ mkdir projects
$ cd projects
$ express sample-application

Then install the project dependencies:

$ cd sample-application
$ npm install

Now you can deploy your application:

$ node app.js
$ Express server listening on port 3000 in development mode

Finally, check the application from your browser at http://127.0.0.1:3000. You can find more info about BitNami Node.js stack at our Wiki or post any question or suggestion in our forum.