please remove `node` symlink from iojs installer

[sintaxi]

Is there a good reason the iojs installer creates a node symlink? Its seems quite invasive to me and not in the spirit of being a good open source citizen so I'm hoping there is a good reason for it to be there. If not, please remove it.

Apart from it being inappropriate its also inconvenient as I'm sure many people want to dabble with iojs while maintaining their production NodeJS systems. This makes it more challenging and will create unexpected behaviour for those who do not read the installer process.

[Florian-R]

#389 #631 #776 and probably a shitload of others.

[targos]

If you need Node.js and io.js to coexist on your system, you can use nvm

[sintaxi]

Is it really to much to ask for an explanation for this? What purpose does this symlink serve?

I would like to switch https://github.com/sintaxi/harp to iojs but this is preventing me from doing that as I'm not comfortable forcing the harp community to abandon NodeJS. This behaviour hostile and unprofessional and the lack of explanation leads me to believe this "feature" is self-serving and not operating in good faith. Please don't dismiss this without an explanation as to why iojs feels compelled to override competing binaries on my machine.

[tonylukasavage]

This does seem like a good case for a simple confirmation in the installer as to whether or not you want the symlink

[brianloveswords]

@sintaxi I think the explanation is here: #249 (comment) (and there's an even longer discussion at #631)

[targos]

It is like MariaDB vs MySQL : io.js is a replacement for Node. Too many modules/scripts rely on the node executable.

[vkurchatkin]

This was closed primarily because it is a duplicate. You can find extensive explanation in linked issues

[vkurchatkin]

@sintaxi your harp project relies on this as well as many other packages: https://github.com/sintaxi/harp/blob/master/bin/harp#L1

[sintaxi]

Harp is asking for NodeJS because that is what it depends on.

I would like Harp to depend on iojs instead but I'm not going to force the entire Harp community to abandon NodeJS just because Harp wants to use iojs. I can't in good conscience force this decision on them because its not my place to make that decision for them.

[Fishrock123]

@sintaxi io.js symlinks to node so that it is usable as node, and so that your files with #!/usr/bin/env node will not break.

[sintaxi]

@vkurchatkin btw - thanks for the explanation. If you prefer to close this ticket I can move discussion to issue #249

[sintaxi]

@Fishrock123 I understand the explanation it just isn't based on facts. If the user has NodeJS installed which is what the script is asking for, it will run just fine. In reality the scripts are much more likely to break if some systems run node as nodejs and others run iojs.

[indexzero]

@Fishrock123 what about a bin shim that would run iojs or node depending on external config? Or maybe at least making this an option in the installer?