Setting up Vue CLI 3 on our system

A common way to work with Vue CLI 3 is via a command-line app called the Command-Line Interface (CLI), where we run our Vue CLI 3 commands. Another prerequisite is to have Node.js installed on our machine.

If you are working on a shared computer, say, within a team of your fellow developers, the chances are that you already have all the prerequisites. In that case, you could just verify that you can start using Vue CLI 3 right away by running a couple of checks.

Is Vue CLI 3 already available?

To quickly check whether you can run Vue CLI 3 right now and skip all the installation steps, run the following command in your command-line app:

node --version

Also, check for Vue CLI 3 with this command:

vue -V

If you get back any version of Node above 8.9 (ideally, above 8.11.0), you're good to go. Obviously, for Vue CLI, you'd want any version above 3.0.0.

Additionally, if you have a version of Vue CLI lower than V3, or you'd like to update to the newest Vue CLI, such as 3.3.0, just run this command:

npm install @vue/cli

What if you don't have Node.js or Vue CLI installed? 

We'll use nvm or nvm-windows for Node, and after that, we'll install Vue CLI 3.

Installing Node.js using Node Version Manager

What is the recommended version of Node.js we should be using? This information is available at the following link: https://cli.vuejs.org/guide/installation.html.

Currently, as of early 2019, to get the best results with Vue CLI, the minimum version of Node required is 8.11.0+, but you can kind of get by with 8.9 if you really have to.

This brings us to another important decision: the installation of NVM. 

Why install NVM?

While it is not absolutely necessary to install NVM in order to run Vue CLI 3 on your system, installing NVM is desirable for a couple of reasons. 

First, you never know when Node will get a recommended update with security fixes, which usually means you'd be better off installing the update on your machine.

Second, if you need to run a different technology, other than Vue, this other technology might also require a different version of Node. To easily switch between these required Node installations on your system, you can simply install NVM.

Installing NVM on Windows

You can download the NVM for Windows from this address:

https://github.com/coreybutler/nvm-windows/releases

Locate the nvm-setup.zip file, download and extract nvm-setup.exe from it, and then install it by following these installation steps:

1. Open the Run prompt by pressing Windows + R. Type cmd into the prompt.
2. While inside the prompt, press Ctrl + Shift + Enter. This will run Command Prompt with administrator privileges, which is required for the next step.
3. Visit https://nodejs.org, and see the current Long-term Support (LTS) version number. For example, currently, on 64-bit Windows, the LTS version is 10.15.1.
4. To install it, run the following command in Command Prompt with administrator privileges:

nvm install 10.15.1

5. Command Prompt will log out the following message:

Downloading node.js version 10.15.1 (64-bit) ...

6. Once the download is finished, we can use the downloaded version of Node. We do it with the following command:

nvm use 10.15.1

7. Finally, you can verify whether the installation was successful by running the following command:

node --version

8. If you're curious about the version of npm that came with your Node installation, simply run the following:

npm --version

Next, we'll install Vue CLI 3.