Node.js Web Development - Fourth Edition

Installing prerequisites

There are three prerequisites: a C compiler, Python, and the OpenSSL libraries. The Node.js compilation process checks for their presence and will fail if the C compiler or Python is not present. The specific method of installing these is dependent on your operating system.

These sorts of commands will check for their presence:

$ cc --version
Apple LLVM version 7.0.2 (clang-700.1.81)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin15.3.0
Thread model: posix
$ python
Python 2.7.11 (default, Jan  8 2016, 22:23:13) 
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 7.0.2 (clang-700.1.81)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

See this for details: https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/BUILDING.md.

The Node.js ...