Drop support of node < 8

[dhritzkiv]

node 8 is the oldest currently supported version.

Building on node 5 (and possibly 6) causes certain nan/v8 calls to fail. This prevents the build/upload of prebuilt binary artefacts.

Questions:

• should this be a semver major release? If so, should 4.3.0 be unpublished (since it doesn't technically support node < 8)?

[mourner]

Should we build for "dev" versions after the stable ones are released? (specifically v9 and v11 here)
Also, does .0.0 act as asterisk (for latest version of that major number) or it really builds for the exact version?

[dhritzkiv]

I thought about that, especially since node 9 is no longer supported (8 is, under LTS). But I figured that if it works, then there's no sense in really dropping it. 11, while not LTS, is still supported. I'm open to dropping 9 support.

[dhritzkiv]

It works as an asterisk, essentially. Ever since node 4, I believe, the node ABI is consistent within major versions. So, building for 10.0.0 is the same as for 10.15.3 (i.e. ABI version is 64)

I'm using the values which are required from here

[dhritzkiv]

To do: I will also include electron prebuilds (since we previously offered them)

[dhritzkiv]

For anyone curious, here's the popularity of each prebuilt asset download from 4.2.2:

[
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-node-v48-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 26
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-node-v47-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-node-v51-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 9
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-node-v57-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 236
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-node-v59-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 35
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-node-v64-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 490
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v47-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v48-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v49-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 5
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v50-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v57-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 5
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v54-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v51-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v64-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 7
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v53-darwin-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v47-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v48-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v49-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v50-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v51-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v53-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v54-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v57-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-electron-v64-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 5
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-node-v47-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 6
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-node-v48-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 288
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-node-v51-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 1011
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-node-v57-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4210
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-node-v59-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 205
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-node-v64-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 4308
            },
            {
              "name": "gl-v4.2.2-node-v67-linux-x64.tar.gz",
              "downloadCount": 318
            }
]

Take aways:

• node 8 and node 10 are most popular.
• node v7 is relatively popular (and more than twice as popular as 9 and 11, combined)
• node 6 is slightly more popular than 9.
• electron downloads are blips

[dhritzkiv]

Updates:

• I've reconsidered my position on electron pre-builds. The number of electron prebuilt downloads is too insignificant to support.
• I won't issue a semver major release for two reasons:
  1. End-of-life versions of node (which we're not supporting) are not expected to be supported. In short, this is not an ipso facto breaking change.†
  2. 4.3.0 (where the breaking change was introduced) is already published, and cannot be unpublished (past the 72 hour grace period).

†Users stuck on node <8 can pin their version to v4.2.2.