I’m not sure offhand. I’ve never used nvm or node.js either.
But from a quick bit of DuckDuckGo-fu and a quick squint through the nvm source code, it’s changing environment variables like $PATH and $MANPATH to point to a specified version of node.
But it’s not changing anything inside a parent process.
$PATH is a global environment variable.
If you run a script that modifies $PATH, it will affect the environment of the shell/terminal that you’re working in.
It will also affect subsequent shells/terminals that you open.
Other shells that were already open before you ran nvm use will not be affected unless you issue a command to re-load/re-initialise the environment in each of those shells. Like . ~/.bashrc or some-such.
Then $PATH (and the rest of the environment variables) will be reloaded/refreshed in that terminal.
So for example - let’s say you have three terminals already open.
You go into terminal 2 and run nvm use to change the node version. If you now check the node version in terminal 2, it will report whatever version you just selected. Because $PATH was modified.
Likewise, if you open a fourth terminal and query the node version, it will list the version you just selected.
But if you go to terminal 1, or terminal 3 and query the version, it will most likely list the old version, because the environment in those terminals needs to be re-initialised/re-loaded to pick up the change to $PATH. Because each instance of Bash is started with a fresh copy of the environment.
Terminals 1 & 3 were opened around the same time as terminal 2. But even though $PATH is a global environment variable, their copy of $PATH was not affected by the change to terminal 2’s $PATH, which would also affect the global $PATH.
So these older terminals will not be affected unless their environment is reloaded/refreshed…… I think?!
I could be wrong on that though!
