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ros-melodic-npm-conflict.md

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ROS melodic does not allow me to install NPM

I have ROS installed in my Ubuntu Bionic (18.04). When i try to install npm using apt sudo apt install npm, I get this lovely error:

kaustubh@Workbench:/etc/apt/preferences.d$ sudo apt install npm
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 npm : Depends: node-gyp (>= 0.10.9) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

According to this git issue on ROS, the issue is related to different versions of nodesjs dependencies on libssl-dev. NickZ's comment told me what to do, but how? Also this bug report confirmed the theroy.

I found the packages that had nodejs using, sudo apt-cache policy nodejs

nodejs:
  Installed: 8.10.0~dfsg-2ubuntu0.4
  Candidate: 8.10.0~dfsg-2ubuntu0.4
  Version table:
 *** 8.10.0~dfsg-2ubuntu0.4 500
        500 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     8.10.0~dfsg-2ubuntu0.2 500
        500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security/universe amd64 Packages
     8.10.0~dfsg-2 500
        500 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/universe amd64 Packages

I needed to shift to 8.10.0~dfsg-2ubuntu0.2 to fix the issue and install npm. This (link)[https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PinningHowto] helped a bit. So I set out to figure how to 'pin' my nodejs package.

FINALLY, found this, thanks Falko Timme for taking you time and writing this article.

I created a file called nodejs-pin under /etc/apt/preferences.d directory, with the following content:

Package: nodejs
Pin: version 8.10.0~dfsg-2ubuntu0.2
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: nodejs-dev
Pin: version 8.10.0~dfsg-2ubuntu0.2
Pin-Priority: 1001

This gives the 8.10.0~dfsg-2ubuntu0.2 version priority of 1001, which is higher than 500 priority of 8.10.0~dfsg-2ubuntu0.4 version. I saved the file, ran sudo apt update, checked the pinned status using sudo apt-cache policy

.
.
.
500 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 Packages
     release v=18.04,o=Ubuntu,a=bionic,n=bionic,l=Ubuntu,c=main,b=amd64
     origin in.archive.ubuntu.com
Pinned packages:
     nodejs -> 8.10.0~dfsg-2ubuntu0.2 with priority 1001
     nodejs-dev -> 8.10.0~dfsg-2ubuntu0.2 with priority 1001

Ran sudo apt install nodejs nodejs-dev and then apt install npm, which installed npm on my machine :)