Running node.js on windows without using Cygwin

Finally node.js is available as a windows binary without requiring Cygwin to be installed.

As of writing this post you can download the node.js binary 0.5.6. Currently npm does not work with node.js on windows. You need to download and use ryppi.py instead of npm. It works similar to npm but requires python. To setup node.js first set the PATH and NODE_PATH to the where you have copied node.exe.

             set PATH=%PATH%;c:\node
             set NODE_PATH=c:\node

It is better to set these environment variables in the System Properties so that you don't have to set these variables every time. Follow the following steps to do that.

1. Right-click Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Advanced system settings in the left side bar.
3. Click the Advanced tab.
4. Click Environment variables.
5. Append the node path to the PATH variable
6. Create a new variable NODE_PATH and set it to the path where node is installed

Once you are done with it need to install Python as ryppi.py is a python script which works like npm. Once you are done with it you can install any of the libraries by using the following command.

             python ryppi.py install socket.io express

Am assuming here that python is setup using the installer which also will also setup the path of python in the environment variables.