The command-line
version of coffee is available as a
Node.js utility, requiring
Node 6 or later. The
core compiler however, does not depend on Node, and can be run in any JavaScript environment, or in the browser (see
Try CoffeeScript).
To install, first make sure you have a working copy of the latest stable version of
Node.js. You can then install CoffeeScript globally with
npm:
npm install --global coffeescript
This will make the coffee and cake commands available globally.
If you are using CoffeeScript in a project, you should install it locally for that project so that the version of CoffeeScript is tracked as one of your project’s dependencies. Within that project’s folder:
npm install --save-dev coffeescript
The coffee and cake commands will first look in the current folder to see if CoffeeScript is installed locally, and use that version if so. This allows different versions of CoffeeScript to be installed globally and locally.
If you plan to use the
--transpile option (see
Transpilation) you will need to also install
@babel/core either globally or locally, depending on whether you are running a globally or locally installed version of CoffeeScript.
