Hi All, After a bit of digging around, although not officially supported by Lithium yet I've worked out the process to install and use the Lithium Community SDK natively on Windows, the process is relatively straightforward as you'll see below, however it does take a little while for the dependencies to compile. This works for Windows 7, 8 and 10: Install the latest stable version of NodeJS LTS (version 8.x) at the time of writing this post.Open Windows PowerShell as an Admin (right click and select Run as Administrator)run the following commands in powershell:npm install --production windows-build-tools (note this will take a while to complete).npm install -g gulp npm install -g lithium-sdk After you finish the steps above, close PowerShell and re-open it as a regular user and you can continue to work as normal with the typical commands.For more information see the Community SDK Documentation

If you have trouble installing the windows build tools and python from above, you can try locking the version to 1.3.2, by running this command: npm install --global --production windows-build-tools@1.3.2 Version after this from what i gathered are buggy and likely not fixed, which causes some slow installs or obscure errors. THis worked for me. Enjoy!

RobertT / charan I fixed the Primordials issue.This is caused by an incompatibility between NodeJS v12 and graceful-fs.The easiest fix is to download NVM for Windows and then run the following commands once installed:nvm install 11.15.0 nvm use 11.15.0Once your back on node 11 you should be able to run li create-project with no problems

You're my hero RobertT . Last time I did this was 2016 and this time around I couldn't get it to install properly; kept getting stuck installing the lithium plugin. Khoros support basically told me to go sort myself and that Windows isn't supported. This worked perfectly. Thank you!

Hi Allen, Looking at the error it seems it's not happy with Visual Studio when it comes to the node-gyp dependency part of the build. Visual Studio 2017 and later cause some issues unfortunately.I think I've seen this before, if I remember correctly there is a workaround. Can you try running the following command:npm install --global --production windows-build-tools --vs2015following this re-run the command to install the Lithium-SDKnpm install -g lithium-sdkHopefully that should work.

Hello everyone,I spent a good amount of hours trying to make this work, like, really, A LOT. It always threw some issues at me, whether it's the windows-build-tools or the python version.Later I've found out the lithium-sdk requires Python v2x and Node v => 4.8.4, 6.11.2 and 8.3.0. I also tried installing those versions manually too.At the end, managed to make it work in very little time by using Docker.1. This is the docker file I went with:FROM node:8.3.0 WORKDIR /app RUN apt-get update RUN apt-get install -y git rsync RUN npm install gulp-cli -g RUN npm install lithium-sdk CMD /bin/bash 2. Save that as dockerfile without any extension.3. Open the command and navigate to the folder where the dockerfile was saved and rundocker build -t lithium .You can rename lithium to whatever you like.5. Run the docker builddocker run -it --rm lithiumlithium is the name you added on the previous stepWhen everything finishes, in my case, the li command was saying it's not found so I had to run npm install lithium-sdk -g --force to make it work.5. I saved that as a docker image to avoid having to run the same command again next timedocker ps to list alldocker commit $name (from docker ps) $new_name (your new name) - Example: docker commit lithium initialThat's it. After all that, I was able to work normally with the li command. To connect the container with your Visual Studio Code, you can check this article.Hopefully this can be helpful to someone out there 🙂

How to Install the Lithium Community SDK on Windows

34 Replies

VarunGrazitti
Boss
7 years ago
Great job Robert, thanks for sharing the information.

Happy new year!
AbhishekIlindra
Boss
7 years ago
Thank You RobertT for sharing Valuable information.

Thank You,
Abhishek
VikasB
Boss
7 years ago
RobertT
I am getting error when running the command
npm install -g lithium-sdk
See attached screenshot for logs. I have installed all the required things. Any help would be appreciated.
RobertT
Boss
7 years ago
VikasB

It looks as if the Windows Build Tools haven't installed properly. Try running the following command in PowerShell again as administrator

npm install --production windows-build-tools
It will take a while for the build tools to install, once complete run
npm install -g lithium-sdk
Which should fix the issue.
VikasB
Boss
7 years ago
RobertT
I followed the same steps you mentioned in this thread.
I have tried it multiple time on Powershell and cmd both(as administrator). Even reinstalled all the required things. But every time I am getting the same log.
RobertT
Boss
7 years ago
VikasB the log indicates a problem with a visual studio dependency using MSBuild.exe - typically the windows build tools command installs this, however you may have multiple versions installed if you already have VisualStudio on your machine.

Can you confirm what Windows version you are running (winver from the search bar) and what versions of VisualStudio are showing installed on your machine from Settings > Apps

I'll take a look and see if I can replicate the problem here.
triSolutionFuse
Mentor
7 years ago
If you have trouble installing the windows build tools and python from above, you can try locking the version to 1.3.2, by running this command:

npm install --global --production windows-build-tools@1.3.2

Version after this from what i gathered are buggy and likely not fixed, which causes some slow installs or obscure errors. THis worked for me. Enjoy!
RobertT
Boss
7 years ago
Has anyone used the SDK with local skin precompile recently?
Finding the li serve-sass function a bit temperamental, in most cases it stops watching for changes after launching the http server and no longer compiles the sass into a local CSS file which I find a bit annoying.
murnimaduasli
Contributor
7 years ago
I have this problem
Thanks
PerBonomi
Boss
6 years ago
You're my hero RobertT . Last time I did this was 2016 and this time around I couldn't get it to install properly; kept getting stuck installing the lithium plugin. Khoros support basically told me to go sort myself and that Windows isn't supported. This worked perfectly. Thank you!