Installing the StrongLoop Node distribution

StrongLoop (http://strongloop.com) has put together a supported version of Node that is prepackaged with several useful tools. This is a Node distribution in the same sense in which Fedora or Ubuntu are Linux distributions. StrongLoop brings together several useful packages, some of which were written by StrongLoop. StrongLoop tests the packages together, and distributes installable bundles through their website.

The packages in the distribution include Express, Passport, Mongoose, Socket.IO, Engine.IO, Async, and Request. We will use all of those modules in this book.

To install, navigate to the company home page and click on the Products link. They offer downloads of precompiled packages for both RPM and Debian Linux systems, as well as Mac OS X and Windows. Simply download the appropriate bundle for your system.

For the RPM bundle, type the following:

$ sudo rpm -i bundle-file-name

For the Debian bundle, type the following:

$ sudo dpkg -i bundle-file-name

The Windows or Mac bundles are the usual sort of installable packages for each system. Simply double-click on the installer bundle, and follow the instructions in the install wizard.

Once StrongLoop Node is installed, it provides not only the node and npm commands (we'll go over these in a few pages), but also the slnode command. That command offers a superset of the npm commands, such as boilerplate code for modules, web applications, or command-line applications.