Prepare the Local Development Environment

Node.js is a server-side runtime environment built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. It provides an event-driven, non-blocking (asynchronous) I/O and cross-platform runtime environment. It enables you to build scalable server-side applications using JavaScript and is open-source.   Node.js can be used to build applications like command-line applications, web applications, REST API servers, and many else. It is mostly used to create network programs like web servers. For more information, visit the official site at https://nodejs.org.

Before you can start building your Node.js app, you need to install npm and Node.js. npm is included in the Node.js installation.

It is possible to download the libraries and organize the directories on your own and start that way. However, as your project (and list of dependencies) grows, this will quickly become messy. It also makes collaborating and sharing your code much more difficult.

We recommend using a package manager on your OS.

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

choco install nodejs-lts

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

brew install node

Verify your installation. Open the command line and print the installed versions of node and npm:

node -v
npm -v

This tutorial requires Node.js 20 LTS or later. If node -v reports an older version, install a current Long-Term Support release before continuing.

This tool will create so-called .mtar archives, which are deployable packages that contain your entire project. The tool itself is an OS-dependent binary, but you can leverage npm to install the right version for your OS and append it to the Path variable. Run the following command to install this tool:

npm install -g mbt

Verify your installation. Print the installed version:

mbt -v

You should see output similar to Cloud MTA Build Tool version 1.2.47.

Another tool that you will use often is git. It will allow you to copy (aka clone) existing code project from compatible pages such as https://github.com.

Use the package manager from step 1 to install this tool as well.

choco install git

brew install git

Verify your installation. Print the installed version:

git --version

You now have the Node.js runtime, npm, the Cloud MTA Build Tool (mbt), and git installed and verified — everything you need to clone a project, build it, and package a deployable .mtar archive locally.

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