Installing Zowe CLI with Node.js 16 on Windows

There are three preferred installation workarounds in the event that you are:

• Using Node.js version 16 with npm version 8 on Windows, wish to install from the TGZ, and have restricted Internet access
• Otherwise unable to install from the Zowe CLI TGZ bundle on Windows while offline

Note: The TGZ bundle that we supply is designed to support offline installation (the computer is not connected to the Internet). We recently detected (and reported) an issue with NPM that prevents you from installing the TGZ bundle when the computer is not connected to the Internet. If you encountered this problem, we ask you to upvote the issue (NPM fails to globally install packages from TGZ bundle without Internet connection #4332).

The workaround installation options are, in order of preference:

• Configure NPM proxy to access the public NPM registry (npmjs.org) so that the install from TGZ can succeed. To configure an NPM proxy:
  • If your proxy is HTTP: npm config set proxy <proxyUrl>
  • If your proxy is HTTPS: npm config set https-proxy <proxyUrl>
• Install CLI from an online registry instead of TGZ. This may also require configuring an NPM proxy. See Installing Zowe CLI from an online registry.
• Downgrade NPM to version 6. To downgrade from a newer version of NPM, issue the command: npm install -g npm@6.x

Additional Considerations

There are issues with Node 16 and bundled optional dependencies in offline node installs. Because of this, the optional cpu-features package has been removed in the offline .tgz file available from zowe.org and Broadcom. The install process will attempt to reach a configured registry and to use any NPM proxy configured on the system, but if that fails, the install process will finish normally.

cpu-features changes the SSH cipher order that is used on the zowe uss issue ssh commands, favoring chacha20-poly1305 cipher in cases where CPUs do not have built in AES instructions. This should not affect performance.