Fix EBADENGINE error for Node.js 14.13.1 through 14.17.x

[bbrk24]

Describe the documentation issue

The package.json says it supports "node": "^14.13.1 || >=16.0.0". However, it also lists as a dependency "supports-hyperlinks": "^3.0.0", which requires "node": ">=14.18". Thus, attempting to install using versions of node older than 14.18 results in EBADENGINE.

What solution would you like to see?

There are three possible solutions:

• Say that listing the lower bound as 14.13.1 was a mistake, and bump it to 14.18.0 or higher. I think this could be semver-patch.
• Make supports-hyperlinks an optional dependency, or remove it altogether.
• Revert to support-hyperlinks 2, which supports earlier versions of node.

I'm not familiar enough with the codebase to say which is the best idea.

[bbrk24]

I didn't notice this at first, but I double-checked just now and that's not the only dependency that can trigger this: write-file-atomic 5 requires node ^14.17.0 || ^16.13.0 || >=18.0.0.

[ybiquitous]

@bbrk24 Thanks for the report. Is a workaround of engine-strict=false reasonable?

[bbrk24]

All that does is demote it from an error to a warning -- and, since it currently isn't specified, it's false by default anyways.

[ybiquitous]

Do you know how to detect an inconsistency of engines.node? (for example, a tool for that purpose)

[bbrk24]

No, I'm not aware of any automated tool, but also I haven't looked very hard. I discovered the issue with write-file-atomic by grepping package-lock.json (I was using node 14.17, so only supports-hyperlinks triggered EBADENGINE).

I decided to go back and double-check with the same method, and I found that none of the @csstools packages support node 17 -- they require ^14 || ^16 || >=18. I fully understand the need for such a tool.

[romainmenke]

I found that none of the @csstools packages support node 17

We can relax this if needed.

[bbrk24]

I just created a simple tool to check this: https://github.com/bbrk24/engine-check. I haven't tested it super thoroughly yet but it seems to work so far.

Sample output:

@csstools/css-parser-algorithms@2.0.1 requires node "^14 || ^16 || >=18".
@csstools/css-tokenizer@2.1.0 requires node "^14 || ^16 || >=18".
@csstools/media-query-list-parser@2.0.1 requires node "^14 || ^16 || >=18".
@csstools/selector-specificity@2.2.0 requires node "^14 || ^16 || >=18".
supports-hyperlinks@3.0.0 requires node ">=14.18".
write-file-atomic@5.0.0 requires node "^14.17.0 || ^16.13.0 || >=18.0.0".

[ybiquitous]

@bbrk24 Thanks for sharing your tool. I just confirmed it works on my local machine.

For now, the following way seems easier because changes between jamestalmage/supports-hyperlinks@v2.3.0...v3.0.0 do not seem to include significant things:

Revert to support-hyperlinks 2, which supports earlier versions of node.

But I still have a few questions:

• Do we need to address engines.node strictly in the whole dependency tree?
• Is not there a best practice or something in the Node.js community to address such a problem?
• Will we need to check inconsistency all the time in the future?

By the way, note that Node.js v14 will become end-of-life on April 30 this year. So we will drop the support with the next Stylelint major version.

[bbrk24]

Do we need to address engines.node strictly in the whole dependency tree?

As I mentioned earlier, I use node 14.17, so the others don't affect me directly. However, write-file-atomic does prevent using earlier minor versions of node 14.

I'm not as concerned about @csstools, since node 17 has already reached end of life.

Is not there a best practice or something in the Node.js community to address such a problem?
Will we need to check inconsistency all the time in the future?

I would like to believe there's an existing solution for this, but I'm not aware of one.

By the way, note that Node.js v14 will become end-of-life on April 30 this year. So we will drop the support with the next Stylelint major version.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll have to change my configuration to use v16 or v18 by default instead of v14. As a side note, I'm not aware of any other language that goes through major versions as quickly as Node does.

[ybiquitous]

It seems reasonable to wait until Node.js v14 EOL (about a month left) unless people complain about this inconsistency.

For future releases, we might need to consider any way to check engines.node consistency... 🤔

[ybiquitous]

I just opened an issue to remove Node.js 14 support: #6740

[jeddy3]

Closed by #7020