Problem:

The current distribution of node (v0.10.29) packaged with the Debian distro that comes with the Raspberry Pi 2 B is missing a patch related to UTF8. Because of this you may encounter packages which are unable to compile. You’ll see the following before various errors and eventual failure of installing a package via npm. In my case this failed when trying to install the “onoff” package which relied on “epoll”.

The Error:

../node_modules/nan/nan.h:328:47: error: 'REPLACE_INVALID_UTF8' is not a member of 'v8::String'
static const unsigned kReplaceInvalidUtf8 = v8::String::REPLACE_INVALID_UTF8;

Solution:

Install a newer version of Node, such as v0.12.x:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_0.12 | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs


Verify this worked with:

node --version


That’s it! You should now be ready to resume installing your packages. Enjoy.