Upgrade Node.js and npm to v18 and v9 #48950

kevin940726 · 2023-03-09T05:36:47Z

What?

Upgrade Node.js and npm to their latest (LTS) versions.

Upgrade Node.js to v18 (v18.14.2)
Upgrade npm to v9 (v9.6.1)

Related issues and prior art:

Notable Changes

Start using npm workspaces

Since npm v7, it introduces native support for workspaces to manage monorepo. It works great with lerna, which is also updated to the latest version in this PR (v6.5.1). We can now run scripts in package/ folder using the -w command. For instance:

# Run the "build" script inside `babel-preset-default`
npm run -w packages/babel-preset-default build
# We can also use the package name
npm run -w @wordpress/babel-preset-default build

# Other commands are supported too
npm install -w packages/babel-preset-default @babel/preset-env

See the official documentation for more info.

Upgrade lockfile to v3

This is done by an automatic update from the v1 lockfile. I believe that most packages are not changed, which can happen if we delete and regenerate the lockfile from scratch. This should be mostly backward-compatible, but it's still a breaking change, do file an issue if there's any bug!

Deprecate running binaries using `npm bin` and `node_modules/.bin`

We should use npx instead. npm bin is also deprecated in newer npm versions.

Enable `legacy-peer-deps`

This is mostly a temporary change until we fix all the underlying dependencies issues in the project. See #48588 for more info and the tracking issue.

Update the minimum required version of Node.js and npm in packages.

This is a breaking change. Prior art: #43141.

Why?

Node.js v14 will be EOL at the end of April. Node.js v16 is also going to be EOL in September. See the release schedule. It's a good idea to stay up-to-date and be long-term supported.

How?

Upgrade Node.js and npm to v18 and v9 respectively
Upgrade lerna
Enable npm workspaces
Run npm install to upgrade the lockfile
Manually delete and reinstall some packages to solve conflicts in the lockfile. Notably some optional dependencies won't be listed after an automatic upgrade, so I remove the dependencies that include them and reinstall them to fix that
Manually fix some other issues

Testing Instructions

Use nvm to upgrade your Node.js version to v18. (nvm install 18)
Install the latest version of npm (npm i -g npm@latest).
Run npm ci (this will delete the node_modules folder and regenerate it)
Try some other commands like npm run build
For tsc --build to work, you might have to delete the old cache (rm -rf packages/*/tsconfig.tsbuildinfo).

Testing Instructions for Keyboard

Same as above.

kevin940726

Some workflows are expected to fail in this PR:

Performance tests
Compressed size
Pull request automation

The first two check out to a certain point at trunk which doesn't support later versions of Node.js and npm in the engines settings yet. I don't know how to solve it for this PR, but it should work after merging to trunk though.

Pull request automation also check out to trunk to run the workflow, which doesn't support npm workspaces yet. This issue should also go away after merging to trunk.

kevin940726 · 2023-03-09T16:32:02Z

packages/react-native-editor/__device-tests__/helpers/serverConfigs.js

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 exports.local = {
-	host: 'localhost',
+	host: '127.0.0.1',


This seems to be needed after node 17 for some reason.

kevin940726 · 2023-03-09T16:33:06Z

test/native/jest.config.js

@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ module.exports = {
 	// and add it first so https://github.com/facebook/react-native/blob/v0.60.0/Libraries/react-native/react-native-implementation.js#L324-L326 doesn't pick up the Platform npm module.
 	moduleDirectories: [
 		'../../node_modules/react-native/Libraries/Utilities',
-		'../../node_modules',
+		'node_modules',


For some reason the original ../../node_modules doesn't work anymore after opting-in to npm workspaces.

kevin940726 · 2023-03-09T16:34:20Z

packages/react-native-editor/CHANGELOG.md

@@ -10,20 +10,21 @@ For each user feature we should also add a importance categorization label  to i
 -->

 ## Unreleased
+-   [*] Increase the minimum Node.js version to 18 [#48950]


I'm actually not sure if this should be [*] or [***]. Maybe some RN folks could answer that?

I'd say it's [*] because it's a change that initially won't impact users.

kevin940726 · 2023-03-09T17:43:58Z

.npmrc

@@ -1,2 +1,3 @@
 save-exact = true
 engine-strict = true
+legacy-peer-deps = true


This is supposed to be a temporary solution until we fix all the peer dependency issues.

@kevin940726 I created a draft PR that solves the peer dependency issue related to React Native and removes this NPM configuration option. As far as I tested, the dependency installation works, although warnings are displayed. Let me know if you'd like to incorporate it into this PR, thanks 🙇 !

Nice! I tried the same thing too, but I think it would be better to be a separate follow-up PR. Warnings can be intimidating for some, I would like to solve all warnings before we roll them out to all contributors.

gziolo · 2023-03-21T10:54:20Z

Every time there is a change in the package-lock.json file I have to regenerate it from scratch. I'll rebase and update it once 6.2 lands 😅 .

Ah right, sorry about that. We can land next week on Wednesday. I think we should also draft a short update this week to publish on Make Core that we plan to migrate Node and npm next week starting with Gutenberg, and we will follow up with WP core.

desrosj · 2023-03-21T14:42:16Z

Just wanted to note that on the Core side, we are blocked by this request to the systems team.. I'll reach out to try and get an update on this today.

My preference is to merge this change here, and then merge the accompanying changes to Core right after (same day if possible). But it's not clear if that would require any @wordpress/* packages would need to be updated in Core to make that happen. We'd just need to update WordPress/wordpress-develop#4028.

I left a few notes in places where changes to WP packages weren't fully reverted now that we set the minimum Node.js version to v14 instead of v18. Excellent work tackling all the changes. I hope we can land this PR soon.

Is there any reason why we shouldn't make the minimum v16.x? 14.x is EOL starting April 30th. A secondary goal, IMO, should be to use this as an opportunity to trim all unsupported versions.

Is the concern that anyone previously using 12 or 14 pulls updates to Gutenberg or Core and then are unable to run Node scripts? If so, maybe we leave it as 14 in this PR, and include in the post a specific date that we will change the minimum to 16 to allow contributors to update their local environment.

gziolo · 2023-03-23T12:04:16Z

Is there any reason why we shouldn't make the minimum v16.x? 14.x is EOL starting April 30th. A secondary goal, IMO, should be to use this as an opportunity to trim all unsupported versions.
Is the concern that anyone previously using 12 or 14 pulls updates to Gutenberg or Core and then are unable to run Node scripts? If so, maybe we leave it as 14 in this PR, and include in the post a specific date that we will change the minimum to 16 to allow contributors to update their local environment.

I would avoid putting immediate pressure on all projects to upgrade to Node 16 because we recommend in the official documents and learning materials using Node 14. Once we update those resources to go with any LTS version, we can switch to Node 16 as the minimum version, or completely remove it from the config of WordPress packages and only leave a note in the corresponding README files. The biggest challenge is the different format for the lock file and more importantly the fact that we still didn't update packages to work correctly with the new behavior for peer dependencies.

gziolo · 2023-03-24T11:00:17Z

We will have to stick with Node.js 16 in WordPress core for now. See https://make.wordpress.org/systems/2023/02/09/upgrade-nodejs-npm-on-the-build-server/#comment-2077 for the context. There shouldn't be a big difference between v16 and v18. @desrosj, do you anticipate any challenges with using two different Node.js versions between both projects? We would still run tests against v16 and v18 on CI in Gutenberg.

gziolo · 2023-03-24T11:01:34Z

.github/workflows/unit-test.yml

@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ jobs:
        strategy:
            fail-fast: false
            matrix:
-                node: ['14']
+                node: ['18']


It would be good to have the same tests running for Node.js v16 and v18. We can change that as a follow-up if that isn't as simple as updating this line.

The only problem is with the engines setting in the root package.json. It pins both Node and npm to the latest version so that we can ensure developers have the same local environment. However, CI will fail when running Node v16 because we have engine-strict set to true. Perhaps we can ignore this setting on CI with the --engine-strict=false CLI arg? WDYT?

That would be great to have it possible to run with different Node.js versions whatever the solution is.

It turns out it might be worth being in a different PR for clarity. Adding cli args to every command is too verbose, we might want to do it another way, like calling npm config set before the test.

Maybe the GitHub action supports it, see how the registry URL gets passed here:

https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/blob/bd41bd9f85f1e56122954499f1681a9f821ddc58/.github/workflows/build-plugin-zip.yml#L329L333

Follow-up sounds great 👍

I don't see any useful option in the GitHub action for this tweak:

https://github.com/actions/setup-node/blob/main/action.yml

We will figure out a different approach.

kevin940726 · 2023-03-30T10:52:49Z

This should be ready now! I'll be away for a couple of days, so if anyone can help address any further feedback and merge this will be greatly appreciated!

talldan · 2023-04-12T04:22:42Z

@kevin940726 @desrosj @gziolo What are the remaining steps for getting this across the line? I notice that April 30th date is approaching 😬

Do we need to update this PR to use node 16 as per this comment?

Maybe we can schedule a date to merge this and commit the core patch.

kevin940726 · 2023-04-12T05:57:37Z

Do we need to update this PR to (use node 16 as per this comment](#48950 (comment))?

I thought that's for core, not gutenberg?

The only remaining task I see is #48950 (comment), which can be solved in a different PR. LMK if there's something I missed though! Once someone approves the PR I'll rebase it and merge it :)

gziolo · 2023-04-12T13:05:38Z

@kevin940726 @desrosj @gziolo What are the remaining steps for getting this across the line? I notice that April 30th date is approaching 😬

Do we need to update this PR to use node 16 as per this comment?

Maybe we can schedule a date to merge this and commit the core patch.

It would be great to agree on the date and announce it ahead of time so contributors know when they will have to switch to a different Node.js version when developing for Gutenberg and WordPress core. I think that communication is key here to avoid any disruption, as there are different lock file formats between npm 6, npm 7/8, and npm 9. It's also why we need to enforce a certain pair of Node.js and npm in both projects so people don't get the lock file regenerated with a different lock file version all the time when using different Node.js major versions.

I don't know whether we need to use Node.js 16 everywhere, but it definitely might be annoying to have to switch between Node.js 16 and 18 when contributing to both the Gutenberg plugin and WordPress core. Let's keep in mind that the maintenance for Node 16 ends on 2023-09-11 – in 5 months.

Regarding the possible date, the next Gutenberg plugin RC1 release will probably happen today, and it will trigger npm publishing. It means that the next tentative windows for upgrading Node.js and npm are:

26.04.2023
10.05.2023
24.05.2023

Technically, we don't need to do everything at once, but it could be easier to schedule all steps for a single week.

kevin940726 · 2023-04-12T13:23:55Z

Do we have an open PR on core for upgrading Node.js and npm, or is the work ongoing somewhere? Also, curious about the context of why we have to target Node 16 for core for now?

talldan · 2023-04-14T04:32:06Z

Do we have an open PR on core for upgrading Node.js and npm

I think there's one here - WordPress/wordpress-develop#4028

desrosj · 2023-05-11T17:53:34Z

Do we have an open PR on core for upgrading Node.js and npm, or is the work ongoing somewhere? Also, curious about the context of why we have to target Node 16 for core for now?

The WordPress.org build server that updates https://build.trac.wordpress.org/ when a commit to WordPress is made in SVN does not have Node 18 installed. 16.x is the newest version there. If the engines are updated to require >= 18, that will break. There is also no current plan to add Node 18.

If I remember correctly, version requirements defined within engines are strictly adhered to. With this and the previous point in mind, I'm concerned about setting any engines values to >=18. It will make working with the plugin within a WordPress checkout significantly more difficult having to remember to switch versions.

As far as I can tell, the differences between 16 and 18 should be minimal. I don't think there is a reason we can't recommend 18 but still support (and test against) 16. We also need to adjust the npm version to reflect the version bundled with that version of Node.

kevin940726 · 2023-05-15T08:16:21Z

With this and the previous point in mind, I'm concerned about setting any engines values to >=18. It will make working with the plugin within a WordPress checkout significantly more difficult having to remember to switch versions.

Fair point! I can update it to make the engines field >=16 a bit loose at the root level.

We also need to adjust the npm version to reflect the version bundled with that version of Node.

If I'm not mistaken, npm version is not strictly coupled with the Node version. We can use a newer or older Node version but still use the latest npm version. I recommend targeting the latest npm version so that there's less confusion and version consistency. I think Core can also use the latest npm by running npm i -g npm during setup. WDYT?

simison · 2023-05-29T19:55:40Z

@desrosj Just heads up that Node.js v16 maintenance support ends in about 3 months (ref), i.e. end of security updates. So I'd assume that's when you need some kind of v18 upgrade plan regardless.

Mamaduka · 2023-06-01T10:27:19Z

Playwright just dropped support for Node 14 - https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/releases/tag/v1.34.0.

fluiddot · 2023-07-04T14:39:00Z

Hey @kevin940726 👋, I noticed it's been a couple of months since the last commit. I'm wondering if we found any blockers that are preventing the PR to continue or if we are just waiting for reviews.

Regarding the blockers, and based on the above comments:

Are we perhaps waiting to upgrade node/npm in WordPress core (Upgrade NodeJS to 16.x wordpress-develop#4028)?
Are any packages blocking the upgrade due to peer deps with React 17 (e.g. React Native still uses React 17)?

NOTE: Regarding React Native, I'd like to share that we're actively working on upgrading it to a version that uses React 18.2. In case, using the current React Native version is still a blocker, I'd like to propose either following the approach of using legacy-peer-deps (reference) or overriding the peer dependencies for React Native.

kevin940726 added [Type] Build Tooling Issues or PRs related to build tooling [Type] Breaking Change For PRs that introduce a change that will break existing functionality npm Packages Related to npm packages GitHub Actions Pull requests that update GitHub Actions code labels Mar 9, 2023

kevin940726 force-pushed the update/npm branch 4 times, most recently from e515207 to 85939a6 Compare March 9, 2023 08:22

kevin940726 commented Mar 9, 2023

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kevin940726 force-pushed the update/npm branch from 96d162c to e17e1bf Compare March 10, 2023 02:51

kevin940726 marked this pull request as ready for review March 10, 2023 04:12

kevin940726 requested review from ellatrix, fluiddot, dcalhoun, gziolo, adamsilverstein, talldan, swissspidy, ajitbohra, ntwb, nerrad, ryanwelcher, noisysocks, draganescu, tellthemachines, adamziel, dmsnell, atimmer and mmtr as code owners March 10, 2023 04:12

gziolo reviewed Mar 24, 2023

View reviewed changes

kevin940726 force-pushed the update/npm branch from 2740840 to 8e3d900 Compare March 30, 2023 10:21

Upgrade npm

3bcbf37

kevin940726 force-pushed the update/npm branch from 8e3d900 to 3bcbf37 Compare March 30, 2023 10:24

talldan assigned kevin940726 Apr 12, 2023

kevin940726 mentioned this pull request May 9, 2023

Upgrade NodeJS to 16.x WordPress/wordpress-develop#4028

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Allow Node 16

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kevin940726 requested a review from ndiego as a code owner May 15, 2023 08:19

simison mentioned this pull request May 25, 2023

Allow developing Gutenberg with NPM v7 and v8 #46400

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jonathanbossenger mentioned this pull request Jul 3, 2023

Tutorial - Installing Node.js and npm for local WordPress development WordPress/Learn#1639

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youknowriad mentioned this pull request Jul 6, 2023

Minimal node and npm upgrade #52363

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minimal node and npm upgrade #53426

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Use NPM workspaces #59933

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Use npm workspaces for packages #65681

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Upgrade Node.js and npm to v18 and v9 #48950

Upgrade Node.js and npm to v18 and v9 #48950

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Upgrade Node.js and npm to v18 and v9 #48950

Upgrade Node.js and npm to v18 and v9 #48950

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kevin940726 commented Mar 9, 2023 • edited Loading

What?

Notable Changes

Start using npm workspaces

Upgrade lockfile to v3

Deprecate running binaries using npm bin and node_modules/.bin

Enable legacy-peer-deps

Update the minimum required version of Node.js and npm in packages.

Why?

How?

Testing Instructions

Testing Instructions for Keyboard

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Deprecate running binaries using `npm bin` and `node_modules/.bin`

Enable `legacy-peer-deps`

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