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

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.