Automated (binary) install of the most recent NodeJS version to ~/.local/

update-node.sh

#!/bin/sh - 

set -o errexit
set -o nounset

PREFIX=$HOME/.local/node

if ! command -v curl > /dev/null || ! command -v jq > /dev/null; then
    echo "this script requires curl and jq"
    exit 1
fi

VERSION=$(curl -s https://nodejs.org/dist/index.json | jq -r 'sort_by(.version)|reverse|.[0].version')

if command -v node && [ "$(node --version)" = "${VERSION}" ]; then
    echo "Nothing to do, node ${VERSION} already installed"
    exit
fi

echo "Installing version ${VERSION}"
# remove the present node installation
if [ -d $PREFIX ]; then
    rm -rf $PREFIX
fi
mkdir -p $PREFIX

# download and extract nodejs
curl -s https://nodejs.org/dist/${VERSION}/node-${VERSION}-linux-x64.tar.xz | tar xJf - -C ${PREFIX} --strip 1