coreybutler/nvm-windows

NVM for Windows is a utility that lets you install and switch between multiple versions of Node.js on a single Windows computer. Node.js is a JavaScript runtime that developers use to build web servers and command-line tools. Different projects often require different Node.js versions, one might need a long-term support release for stability, while another needs a newer version to use recent language features. Without a version manager, switching between Node.js versions means uninstalling one and installing another, which is slow and error-prone. NVM for Windows solves this by managing multiple installations side-by-side. You run a command like nvm install 20.0.0 to install a specific version, and then nvm use 20.0.0 to switch to it. Under the hood, the tool creates a symbolic link (a pointer in the filesystem) that redirects Node.js commands to whichever version you have active. The README notes that this is a completely separate project from the original nvm for macOS and Linux, it was built from scratch with a different architecture because the original does not run on Windows. You would use NVM for Windows when working on multiple Node.js projects with different version requirements, testing your own package against several Node versions, or setting up a development environment where you want to manage Node independently of a system installer. The tool is written in Go (the readme notes this with mild humor: \"a node.js version management utility for Windows, ironically written in Go\"), ships as a Windows installer, and is recommended by Microsoft, Google, and npm as the standard Node version manager for Windows. The maintainer is also working on a successor project called Runtime.