Error The brew link step did not complete successfully

Question

I m trying to install node js via Homebrew  Unfortunately  I get this error         brew install node    gt  Downloading http   nodejs org dist v0 8 10 node-v0 8 10 tar gz                                                                          100 0     gt    configure --prefix  usr local Cellar node 0 8 10    gt  make install    gt  Caveats Homebrew installed npm  We recommend prepending the following path to your PATH environment variable to have npm-installed binaries picked up     usr local share npm bin Warning  Could not link node  Unlinking    Error  The  brew link  step did not complete successfully The formula built  but is not symlinked into  usr local You can try again using  brew link node     gt  Summary  usr local Cellar node 0 8 10  856 files  13M  built in 103 seconds   So then I try to link node manually           brew link node Linking  usr local Cellar node 0 8 10    Warning  Could not link node  Unlinking     Error  Could not symlink file   usr local Cellar node 0 8 10 lib node modules npm scripts relocate sh Target  usr local lib node modules npm scripts relocate sh already exists  You may need to delete it  To force the link and delete this file  do    brew link -f formula name  To list all files that would be deleted    brew link -n formula name   No luck  so I try forcefully linking node           brew link -f node Linking  usr local Cellar node 0 8 10    Warning  Could not link node  Unlinking     Error  Permission denied -  usr local lib dtrace node d   I m not familiar with dtrace in any regard and I m afraid to mess with permissions  so I tried to sudo        git  master  sudo brew link -f node Password  Error  Cowardly refusing to  sudo brew link  You can use brew with sudo  but only if the brew executable is owned by root  However  this is both not recommended and completely unsupported so do so at your own risk    I ve tried uninstalling node via brew uninstall node and retrying the install with no luck

User · Answer

I fixed this in El Capitan by using the following command  Honestly  no idea what it does  but thought I d share since it fixed my problem   brew link --overwrite node

User · Answer

I was struggling with this for a while   for me  npm uninstall npm -g  did nothing   I tried a bunch of things   npm uninstall npm -g brew uninstall node brew install node   I was still having some issues and was getting errors when i tried to link the node files  Finally i tried this  brew link --overwrite node   That seemed to have fixed it   it overwrites al the conflicting files and also links node and npm   Hope this helps

User · Answer

I have tried all of the methods and none of them works  The easiest way is to reinstall node from https   nodejs org en download   Simply download the pkg and install it  Now I have a working npm and node again

User · Answer

the ultimate answer  change the owner of that directory to whoever you are  sudo chown -R  whoami   usr local include   which is also recommended by brew if you run brew doctor

User · Answer

I had the same problem after transferring all my applications from my old Mac to my new one   I found the solution by running brew doctor       Warning  Broken symlinks were found  Remove them with brew prune   After running brew prune  Homebrew is finally back on track

User · Answer

Try this  Got from another reference and worked for me   brew uninstall node brew update brew upgrade brew cleanup brew install node sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local brew link --overwrite node brew postinstall node

User · Answer

I run Mac OS X Mavericks   I tried to install node 0 10 25 and the top answer did not work for me   natevw says to rm -rf  usr local lib node modules npm but if the permissions on  usr local lib node modules look like this   drwxr-xr-x   3 root      admin   102 Feb  2 20 45 node modules   then brew will not be able to create its npm symlink in that directory   Here s my solution   Step 1  Update Homebrew    brew update   Step 2  Remove node npm everywhere on your system  Some of these commands are not necessary depending on how you installed node npm in the past     brew uninstall npm   brew uninstall node   npm uninstall npm -g   sudo rm -rf  usr local lib node modules   Note  I had stray node files that I found by running brew -v link node  which gave me the verbose output of the linking errors brew was complaining about    You may need to     sudo rm -rf  usr local include node   sudo rm -rf  usr local lib node   Step 3  Open a new terminal and install node    brew install node

User · Answer

Don t know  if it s a good idea or not  After trying all other solutions without success  I just renamed  usr local lib dtrace  linked node and re-renamed the directory again  After that  node worked as expected

User · Answer

sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local    would do just fine as mentioned in the brew site troubleshooting   https   github com Homebrew homebrew wiki troubleshooting

User · Answer

I was getting an error while installation that not able to link node and  usr local include is not writable  Below solution worked for me  -  First create the include folder  note that this requires sudo privileges  cd  usr local  sudo mkdir include  sudo chown -R   whoami    brew --prefix     brew link node

User · Answer

I m a bit late  what worked for me was this     npm uninstall npm -g    brew uninstall node    brew install node    sudo rm -rf  usr local lib dtrace node d    brew link node  caused error with permissions     sudo chmod 777  usr local lib dtrace node d    brew link node   Everything was successful after this sequence

User · Answer

I completely uninstalled brew and started again  only to find the same problem again   Brew appears to work by symlinking the required binaries into your system where other installation methods would typically copy the files   I found an existing set of node libraries here    usr local include node  After some head scratching I remembered installing node at the date against this old version and it hadn t been via brew   I manually deleted this entire folder and successfully linked npm   This would explain why using brew uninstall or even uninstall brew itself had no effect   The highest ranked answer puts this very simply  but I thought I d add my observations about why it s necessary   I m guessing a bunch of issues with other brew packages might be caused by old non-brew instances of packages being in the way

User · Answer

Had been wrecking my head on symlinking node    and nothing seemed to work   but finally what worked is setting the right permissions   This  sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local  did the work for me

User · Answer

by the Finder  Delete this file       usr local lib dtrace node d   in terminal     brew link --overwrite --dry-run node   then     brew link node

User · Answer

thx  suweller   I fixed the problem      bin git  master    brew link node Linking  usr local Cellar node 0 10 25    Warning  Could not link node  Unlinking     Error  Permission denied -  usr local lib node modules npm   I had the same problem as suweller      bin git  master    ls -la  usr local lib    grep node drwxr-xr-x   3 24561  wheel   102 11 Okt  2012 node drwxr-xr-x   3 24561  wheel   102 27 Jan 11 32 node modules   so i fixed this problem by      bin git  master    sudo chown   users   usr local lib node modules    bin git  master    sudo chown   users   usr local lib node   after i fixed this problem I got another one      bin git  master    brew link node Linking  usr local Cellar node 0 10 25    Warning  Could not link node  Unlinking     Error  Could not symlink file   usr local Cellar node 0 10 25 lib dtrace node d Target  usr local lib dtrace node d already exists  You may need to delete it  To force the link and overwrite all other conflicting files  do    brew link --overwrite formula name  To list all files that would be deleted    brew link --overwrite --dry-run formula name   So I removed node d by      bin git  master    sudo rm  usr local lib dtrace node d   got another permission error      bin git  master    brew link node Linking  usr local Cellar node 0 10 25    Warning  Could not link node  Unlinking     Error  Could not symlink file   usr local Cellar node 0 10 25 lib dtrace node d  usr local lib dtrace is not writable  You should change its permissions    and fixed it      bin git  master    sudo chown   users   usr local Cellar node 0 10 25 lib dtrace node d   and finally everything worked      bin git  master    brew link node Linking  usr local Cellar node 0 10 25    1225 symlinks created

User · Answer

The homebrew package for node js now includes npm again  so this happened to me when I missed the homebrew package s message about removing the standalone version first    Assuming  like me  you ve already broken node npm by attempting the upgrade before knowing to npm uninstall npm -g first  you can rm -rf  usr local lib node modules npm and then brew link node  This removes the standalone self-hosted npm package  rather than the one brew would like to install  and lets brew symlink its bundled one from Cellar

User · Answer

You need to remove the npm package manually   first unlink node  brew link -n node  remove npm folder  rm -R  usr local Cellar node 0 8 10 lib node modules npm  link again  brew link node  there will be a soft link to the new location of npm

User · Answer

My problem had a slightly different solution  The directory in which brew wanted to create the symlinks were not owned by the current user   ls -la  usr local bin lib node   grep node yielded    drwxr-xr-x    3 24561  wheel   102 May  4  2012 node drwxr-xr-x    7 24561  wheel   238 Sep 18 16 37 node modules   For me  the following fixed it   sudo chown   users   usr local bin lib node modules sudo chown   users   usr local bin lib node   ps    users  will get expanded to your username  went a little out of my way to help out lazy copy pasters

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I also managed to mess up my NPM and installed packages between these Homebrew versions and no matter how many time I unlinked   linked and uninstalled   installed node it still didn t work   As it turns out you have to remove NPM from the path otherwise Homebrew won t install it  https   github com mxcl homebrew blob master Library Formula node rb L117  Hope this will help someone with the same problem and save that hour or so I had to spend looking for the problem

User · Answer

You probably already installed an older version of node js using a different method  so you need to manually remove the files that are getting in brew s way   Do brew link -n node and manually delete those conflicting files and directories  then try brew link node again

User · Answer

Most brew install issues with node are caused by permission errors or having node previously installed and then trying to install it via brew   The solution that worked for me finally was   WARNING  This will uninstall nodejs  multiple versions  use with caution    Remove node via brew   brew uninstall node also did via force   brew uninstall node --force To use the script Source  Remove node   curl -O https   raw githubusercontent com DomT4 scripts master OSX Node Removal terminatenode sh   Then   chmod  x  path to terminatenode sh   Then     terminatenode sh      Then make sure to do the following command   chown  USER  usr local Then do a brew update  keep doing this until all things are updated    brew update Clean brew up and run update again  might be redundant  and run doctor to make sure things are in place    brew cleanup  brew update  brew doctor And finally install node via brew  verbose    brew install -v node

[macos] Error: The 'brew link' step did not complete successfully

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