How to download only node executable (not in a .tar.gz)

[guest271314]

I'm trying to download only the node executable found in for example node-v17.8.0-linux-x64/bin/. Are there any public facing repositories which provide such a download.

[mhdawson]

Nothing provided by the Node.js project.

[guest271314]

Evidently https://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/tvoi8x/is_there_a_nodejs_download_link_for_only_the_node/. I chopped up and uploaded the node executable myself here https://github.com/guest271314/node_executable.

You folks should really make that happen. There are several use cases for the executable only.

[guest271314]

@mhdawson

This is what I have to do just to get the node executable from one of your binary downloads. I have to download files that I am not going to use.

let fileSystemHandle = await showSaveFilePicker({ suggestedName: 'node' }),
  writable,
  writer;
await import('https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/pako/2.0.4/pako.min.js');
try {
  // throws, see https://github.com/InvokIT/js-untar/issues/30, handle error
  // untar is still defined globally
  await import('https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/build/dist/untar.js');
} catch (e) {
  console.log(e);
} finally {
  // https://stackoverflow.com/a/65448758
  // trying to avoid fetching files that won't be used
  const request = await fetch('node-v16.14.2-linux-x64.tar.gz');
  // Download gzipped tar file and get ArrayBuffer
  const buffer = await request.arrayBuffer(); 
  // Decompress gzip using pako
  // Get ArrayBuffer from the Uint8Array pako returns
  const decompressed = await pako.inflate(buffer); 
  // Untar, js-untar returns a list of files 
  // (See https://github.com/InvokIT/js-untar#file-object for details)
  const files = await untar(decompressed.buffer); 
  writable = await fileSystemHandle.createWritable();
  writer = writable.getWriter();
  const file = files.find(
    ({ name }) => name === 'node-v16.14.2-linux-x64/bin/node'
  ).buffer;
  await writer.write(file);
  await writer.close();
}

Node.js should provide a download of just the executable. Why not?