title: Homebrew - setting a specific version of node on osx
body: <p>I am trying to set a node v 8 requirement for my new project (because I want to use react-redux-firebase generator, which requires v8).</p>
  
  <p>I am having trouble following instructions on SO and Homebrew -they seem be out of date.</p>
  
  <p>I currently run node -v and get v 10.13.0.</p>
  
  <p>brew unlink node returns</p>
  
  <pre><code>Error: No such keg: /usr/local/Cellar/node
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>brew search node returns:</p>
  
  <p>brew search node</p>
  
  <pre><code>==&gt; Formulae
  leafnode            node                node@6              nodebrew
  libbitcoin-node     node-build          node@8 ✔            nodeenv
  llnode              node@10 ✔           node_exporter       nodenv
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>brew link --overwrite --force node@8</p>
  
  <pre><code>Linking /usr/local/Cellar/node@8/8.12.0... 
  Error: Could not symlink lib/node_modules/npm/.mailmap
  /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm is not writable.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I can't use sudo on this command because Homebrew no longer supports it.</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone know how to get node v 8 to run?</p>
  
  <p>Everything I try returns results that say the current version is 10</p>
  
  <p>brew info node</p>
  
  <pre><code>node: stable 11.1.0 (bottled), HEAD
  Platform built on V8 to build network applications
  https://nodejs.org/
  Not installed
  From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/master/Formula/node.rb
  ==&gt; Dependencies
  Build: pkg-config ✘, python@2 ✘
  Recommended: icu4c ✔
  Optional: openssl@1.1 ✘
  ==&gt; Options
  --with-openssl@1.1
      Build against Homebrew's OpenSSL instead of the bundled OpenSSL
  --without-icu4c
      Build with small-icu (English only) instead of system-icu (all locales)
  --without-npm
      npm will not be installed
  --HEAD
      Install HEAD version
  ==&gt; Analytics
  install: 343,912 (30 days), 946,087 (90 days), 3,815,131 (365 days)
  install_on_request: 254,231 (30 days), 699,371 (90 days), 2,669,901 (365 days)
  build_error: 0 (30 days)
  </code></pre>