How To Install Homebrew And Node For Test Automation

Homebrew is a package management system that ease our installation of softwares on Mac and Linux systems.

Node is cross platform back-end JavaScript runtime environment where javascript code can be executed outside web browsers.

Node also come with its default package manager, npm. npm help us install packages and their dependencies for our node application.

For test automation, Appium is a server written using Node.js and we will need Node to run it.

Let’s begin.

Install Homebrew

You can visit homebrew website for the installation instruction.

Or just copy and paste the script below on your terminal.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Upon running the script, it might ask you for a password. Just type the password you use to login to your Mac device. Read carefully the prompts then proceed with the installation. Wait for the installation to finish.

To check, run the command below on Terminal. It should return the version of homebrew installed.

brew -v

Install Node

For Node, I always install the latest LTS version using their package installer. But you can also install node using brew.

Install Node using package installer

1. Go to Node download page

2. Download the latest LTS version for your Mac

3. Open the downloaded file and follow the installation instructions.

4. Once installed. Run the command below on your terminal to verify installation.

node -v

5. Run the command below to check the npm version installed

npm -v

NOTE: We may not have the exact version installed.

Install Node using homebrew

1. Just run command below on your terminal. Make sure that homebrew is installed. Check the instructions above if not yet installed.

brew install node@14

If you notice, I specified the node version I want to install. If you did not set the version, it will install the latest node version. As of this writing, the latest version is 15.7.0 which is not an LTS version (Long Term Support).

2. Follow Steps 4 and 5 of Install Node using package installer to verify the versions installed.

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Check my other articles

• How to Download JDK and export Java Home for Test Automation
• How To Download and Set Up Android Studio for Test Automation