Incomplete version number in .nvmrc

[weltenwort]

Version: >=v0.0.27

Description:

The .nvmrc file just contains 8, which is not recognized as a valid Node.js version number by some tools (e.g. asdf). Since this file is also included in the distributed bundle, it can cause problems during installation in some environments where those tools try to select the correct Node.js version number for the postinstall script.

Possible Solutions:

1. Replace the incomplete version number with a valid Node.js version number, e.g. 8.11.2.
2. Exclude the .nvmrc file from the distributed bundle. This could prevent some problems during installation of the distribution, but not when working with the source release.

[weltenwort]

Personally, I would prefer the first solution, because it should fix the problem for both repository clones and the compiled distribution.

[chandlerprall]

IMO the .nvmrc file shouldn't be distributed. EUI's runtime has no dependency on node, and if it did the package.json's engines field could be used to include messaging about invalid environments. EUI's inclusion in other projects (like Kibana) does have a dependency on node through the postinstall script, but npm or an npm-equivalent (yarn) is executing the command, so we know node is around.

I would also hesitate to be very prescriptive about the exact version of node needed. We'd want to target Kibana's version and would need to update at the same time, but there may be other problems introduced.

.nvmrc in the repo makes it clear to developers what EUI's needs are when developing, but adds no value (that I see) in the distributed package.

[weltenwort]

Kibana specifies its Node.js version in the a.b.c format, both in .nvmrc and .node-version.

[chandlerprall]

Right. I'm curious what would happen (or go wrong) if Kibana uses 8.11.1 and EUI specifies 8.11.0, for example.

[weltenwort]

Since EUI targets the browser, it seems that any mismatch problems would occur in the tooling used at install-time. I can think of three scenarios that could cause problems:

1. EUI ships or depends on native code that only works against specific versions of Node.js.
2. EUI's scripts depend on ECMAScript language features that are not supported anymore in Kibana's Node.js version. (Has any feature ever been removed from that language?)
3. EUI's scripts depend on Node.js APIs that are not supported anymore in Kibana's Node.js version.

[chandlerprall]

I think you're 3 points are correct. We don't currently have any of those limitations, and I'm not convinced .nvmrc is the right place to defend against them for published packages. I'm going to pull the nvmrc file out of the published package and it can be revisited again if/when another use case comes up.

Thanks for digging into the installation problem and filling this issue!