Migrating from nvm to mise

Table of Contents

• A brief introduction to mise


• Why migrate from nvm?


• 
  Migrating from nvm to mise
  
  
  
  
  • 
    Example setup
  
  
  • Stop loading nvm
  
  
  • Migration Options
  
  
  • Option A: Clean Installation (Remove nvm)
  
  
  • Option B: Keep Existing nvm Installations (Symlink)
  
  
  
  
  
  

A brief introduction to mise

, here is how you can easily get started with mise. (This for demonstration purpose only, if you are using another shell, go through the

Why migrate from nvm?

NVM (node version manager) is a popular way to install NodeJS. There are others like fnm or volta (here is an article that compares mise with volta: like python, go, ruby, deno, bun, ... It can also help you to manage binaries from npm

Migrating from nvm to mise

As indicated above, mise can read .nvmrc files to determine the required Node.js version.

This will help to migrate from nvm.

Example setup

For the migration example, we will consider the following NodeJS setup:

• Node.JS 20 and 22 are installed globally using nvm
  


• Node 22 is used by default


• There are two projects, one using Node 17 and the other using Node 18

The project directories contain .nvmrc files:

- node-project-17/.nvmrc: 17

- node-project-18/.nvmrc: 18

Here is what you one might have done using nvm

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.1/install.sh | bash

source ~/.bashrc



nvm install 22

nvm install 20

nvm alias default 22



mkdir -p node-18-project && cd node-18-project && echo "18" > .nvmrc && nvm install && cd -

mkdir -p node-17-project && cd node-17-project && echo "17" > .nvmrc && nvm install && cd -

Stop loading nvm

If it's not already done, install mise (see Getting Started).

Open your shell configuration file (.bashrc, .zshrc, ...) and remove or comment out the nvm initialization script:

# Comment out or remove these lines

# export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"...

then, restart your shell.

Migration Options

You now have two options for migration:

Option A: Clean Installation (Remove nvm)

Unload nvm and remove its directory:

nvm_dir="${NVM_DIR:-~/.nvm}"

nvm unload

rm -rf "$nvm_dir"

Reinstall your global Node.js version with mise:

mise use -g node@22

This will install Node.js 22 globally and set it as the default version.

If you also want to install Node.js 20, you can run mise install node@20 without setting it as the default version.

Install Node.js 17 and 18 for the projects:

cd node-project-17

mise install



cd ../node-project-18

mise install

Option B: Keep Existing nvm Installations (Symlink)

This option is useful if you want to keep your existing nvm installations and use them with mise. (You won't need to reinstall global packages for example.)

Sync existing nvm installations with mise:

 mise sync node --nvm

Verify the sync by listing installations with mise ls:

mise ls

Tool  Version            Config Source Requested

node  17.9.1 (symlink)

node  18.20.4 (symlink)

node  20.11.0 (symlink)

node  22.1.0 (symlink)

If you navigate to node-project-17 and node-project-18, you will see that the correct Node.js version is used.

mise ls

node-18-project# mise ls

Tool  Version            Config Source           Requested

node  17.9.1 (symlink)

node  18.20.4 (symlink)  /node-18-project/.nvmrc 18

node  22.11.0 (symlink)

node  23.1.0 (symlink)

node-18-project# node -v

v18.20.4

Let's now create a new project with Node 19:

mkdir node-project-19 && cd node-project-19

mise use node@19 # create a mise.toml file with node@19

mise ls

Tool  Version            Config Source               Requested

node  17.9.1 (symlink)

node  18.20.4 (symlink)

node  19.9.0             /node-project-19/.mise.toml 19

node  22.11.0 (symlink)

node  23.1.0 (symlink)