Note: These instructions will apply to v0.12 and following.

• An exception is the Chromium ICU instructions which are already relevant to node.
• TODO: remove the above notice when https://github.com/joyent/node/pull/7719 is in master
• TODO: as of https://github.com/joyent/node/pull/8719 the option --with-intl=small-icu will be on by default, AND ICU will be downloaded automatically. Need to reword the wiki here.

What is Intl?

The Intl object is available when EcmaScript 402 support is enabled. Node.js uses ICU4C to implement the Intl object natively.

Unix/Macintosh: Using a pre-built ICU (system-icu)

The Intl package can use an ICU which is already built.

Installing a pre-built ICU

Here are some ways to obtain a pre-built ICU:

From a package manager

Run one of these or similar as appropriate for your system:

 apt-get install libicu-dev
 yum install libicu-dev

Building ICU yourself

• Download ICU source http://icu-project.org/download

• Follow the enclosed readme.html to build ICU, particularly paying attention to the --prefix argument

• build ICU and then:

  make install

Verify an installed ICU

 pkg-config --modversion icu-i18n

If this command fails, node will not be able to find the installed ICU. Verify that the PKG_CONFIG_PATH points to the newly installed icu-i18n.pc file

Configure node

 ./configure --with-intl=system-icu

• Download the latest icu4c-##.#-src.tgz (or .zip)
• Unpack the source as deps/icu (you should have deps/icu/source/...)

Building node with an embedded ICU

Download ICU source

First: Unpack latest ICU icu4c-##.#-src.tgz (or .zip) as deps/icu (You'll have: deps/icu/source/...)

Unix/Macintosh

• ./configure ... --with-intl=full-icu

Or, to build the "small" variant (English only):

• ./configure ... --with-intl=small-icu

Windows

• vsbuild.bat ... full-icu

Or, to build the "small" variant (English only):

• vsbuild.bat ... small-icu

Using the "small" build

• If you use the "small-icu" option (the default), you can provide additional data at runtime.
  • Two methods:
    • The NODE_ICU_DATA env variable: env NODE_ICU_DATA=/some/path node
    • The --icu-data-dir parameter: node --icu-data-dir=/some/path
  • Example: If you use the path /some/path, then ICU 53 on Little Endian (l) finds:
    • individual files such as /some/path/icudt53l/root.res
    • a packaged data file /some/path/icudt53l.dat
  • Notes:
    • See u_setDataDirectory() and the ICU Users Guide for many more details.
    • "53l" will be "53b" on a big endian machine.
• Note that this option is also useful for updating ICU's time zone data.

Verifying an Intl build

• btest402.js is a very basic test of whether Intl is built correctly.

Using Intl build

• See: EcmaScript 402
• Tutorial: Working with Intl

Building using Chromium's ICU

Note: this build is missing some locales, is an older revision, and has a larger output size. It is included here for completeness.

svn checkout --force --revision 214189 \
    http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/deps/third_party/icu46 \
    deps/v8/third_party/icu46
./configure --with-icu-path=deps/v8/third_party/icu46/icu.gyp
make
make install

FAQ

• none (yet!)