Adopt Node@18 as the minimum supported version

[UlisesGascon]

As discussed in expressjs/discussions#224 and expressjs/discussions#196.

Here is a proposal to set Node@18 as the minimum version supported by Express v5.x

Main Changes

• Set Node 18 as the minimum version in the package.json (4b3b8cc)
• Remove from the CI any Node.js version prior to 18 (e9bcdd3)

Changelog

• e9bcdd3 ci: adopt Node@18 as the minimum supported version by @UlisesGascon
• 4b3b8cc feat: adopt Node@18 as the minimum supported version by @UlisesGascon

[wesleytodd]

I had been thinking about this last night after our meeting and I was thinking that we should get all the dependencies working as we expect first and then do this specific change last. Maybe I am over thinking it, but I really do think it will be valuable to point specifically to the commits we landed which "broke" each node.js version. If we stop testing and do this early we loose that signal and it might be hard to untangle after the fact.

[UlisesGascon]

I had been thinking about this last night after our meeting and I was thinking that we should get all the dependencies working as we expect first and then do this specific change last.

AFAIK, there is no rush to merge this PR. It can be the last one before we officially release v5. Let's keep it open for a while and see how do we feel about it in few more commits 👍

[wesleytodd]

We can remove them in an ad-hoc way. That is sort of why I am not sure this specific PR would be what we even land, but I don't see any reason not to keep it open for now until we are sure.

[crandmck]

So I think maybe the docs have gotten a bit ahead of ourselves here as we say 5.x requires Node 18+ ...
https://expressjs.com/en/5x/api.html

IIUC I think we do SUPPORT v18+ but technically we require a lower version. I probably changed this wording because I thought this was decided, my bad.

Probably not a huge deal since anyone who's using 5 has sorted this out... but if this isn't going to land soon, then should we say something different to be accurate?

[UlisesGascon]

@crandmck you are right, the decision was made already (so in terms of documentation we are fine saying Node@18). This PR has moved to draft as we probably will merge it as the last one before releasing Express@5 ref

[RobinTail]

we probably will merge it as the last one before releasing Express@5 ref

I recommend to do it now, @UlisesGascon .
This PR should be treated as a foundation of 5.x, because it enables using modern syntax, latest dependencies and to remove various compatibility crutches in all other PRs.

[wesleytodd]

Cool, glad my idea made some sense lol. I just want to know when we break it even if it is only the first break since that is all around better than not knowing 😄

EDIT: to clarify a bit on top of what @ctcpip said, the idea I had was that we would be able to tell exactly what commit broke people in this complicated and intertwined web of packages. If we cannot figure out which version broke a specific node version it means we just have a more difficult time tracking it down if necessary. This is not a blocker, but it could be useful in the future. Again, this should not stop us from just landing this change, just context to be aware of. So my earlier statement stands, if this is not a draft anymore and we have the approvals, we should just land it and move forward.

[RobinTail]

we should just land it and move forward

Amazing! When do we start doing that, @wesleytodd ?

[UlisesGascon]

This PR is not a draft anymore, feel free to merge it when you are ready @wesleytodd

[wesleytodd]

Can we change the name of this to legacy? And maybe also the names of the individual stages as well?

[ctcpip]

whoops. missed that

[ctcpip]

does it look ok now?

[wesleytodd]

Great addition! We can still tell when CI fails but it does not block! I only made one comment but then yeah I think we should land this!

[ctcpip]

the change also unpins the node minor versions, something we previously agreed to... and I see that is now causing 21 to fail with our favorite query issue. probably solved with a rebase. checking

[ctcpip]

1. PR to update 5.0 -- https://github.com/expressjs/express/pull/5785/files
2. update/merge that when ready (may need a 4.x release first)
3. rebase this PR on the updated 5.0 branch
4. CI should then pass
5. merge this PR

[UlisesGascon]

based on the CI output, should we skip this tests in 21? Due the known QUERY issue.

[wesleytodd]

This is what @ctcpip was hoping to fix with merging the 4.x branch which has a change to skip that QUERY test. We could also consider cherry-picking that commit over if we want to fix it sooner than the next release of v4.

[UlisesGascon]

This PR is now closed as #5803 was merged including this change 🥳

[ctcpip]

reopened. I think some wires got crossed here

[ctcpip]

we wanted these changes in the master->5.0 merge branch/PR, so we pulled them in. therefore, merging that PR will resolve this one.

edit: converting this to draft so we don't accidentally merge it, but all the commits here have been pulled into the merge branch

[RobinTail]

This PR is needed to remove the redundant pipelines that are still running and failing in the 5.0 branch against the unsupported engines.

express/.github/workflows/ci.yml

Line 13 in 9c756b0

node-version: [18, 19, 20, 21, 22]

Without it you will keep having a yearly supply of red crosses in every PR targeting 5.0: