Specifying node versions #29

bkeepers · 2018-04-09T17:48:07Z

Specifying an acceptable version of Node to use across a bunch of different apps running a bunch of different platfroms (Heroku, glitch, nodenv, nvm, etc) has been a pretty big hassle.

Behavior I want: all Probot apps should default to using the latest LTS release. They can override it if they need to.

Here's all the places we currently specify a node version:

probot/template specifies a version in engines that every generated app inherits
$ probot CLI checks engines specified in probot's package.json

There's also challenges with:

Glitch uses engines, but doesn't understand semver: Node dependency version fix. template#44
Each app generated from probot/template now has to keep engines up to date as it evolves. Updating Probot (e.g. with Greenkeeper) doesn't update engines
I don't think any of the development tools (nodenv, nvm, etc) respect engines

Is there a better strategy or method for specifying node versions? Is there a way that apps can delegate to Probot for the version?

cc @gr2m @zeke @koddsson

The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:

abhijeetps · 2018-04-09T18:03:18Z

Just wanted to share an addition details after exploring three different CLIs.

Here's my comment on issue: wip/app#61 (comment)
Note that by updating package.json by using >=, with this, it's updating Node.js to version 9.10.1, (most recent version with latest features).

"engines": {
    "node": ">=8.3.0",
    "npm": ">=5.3.0"
  },

And by just using just node: "8", it's updating it to Node.js version 8.11.1 (most recent LTS version of Node.js version 8).

"engines": {
    "node": "8",
  },

Hope this will be helpful. I too will check some other possibilities. 😄

zeke · 2018-04-09T18:06:07Z

At Heroku, I built http://semver.io/ to answer this question.

$ curl https://semver.io/node/stable
9.11.1

$ curl "https://semver.io/node/resolve/?range=^8.3.0"
8.11.1

Opened a Glitch support issue about it: https://support.glitch.com/t/irregular-support-for-semver-engines/3535

koddsson · 2018-04-09T19:38:07Z

I know I've talked to you about it before @bkeepers but I'm still a huge fan of just installing node as a dependency.

Installing the node package will just download and place a node binary in your node_modules/ folder and then you have a guerantee that any npm scripts you run will use the binary specified.

That means that you:

don't have to have any additional tooling
don't have to rely on the platform you are running on to provide the correct binaries
can update it like any other npm package and control it with semver

It's not documented a ton and I'm not sure how many people use it but if it's just downloading and executing a binary I feel like the risk is pretty low.

Here's I would see it working. With these changes to probot/probot (just for debugging)

diff --git a/bin/probot.js b/bin/probot.js
index fa29e7d..af28900 100755
--- a/bin/probot.js
+++ b/bin/probot.js
@@ -3,6 +3,8 @@
 const semver = require('semver')
 const version = require('../package').engines.node
 
+console.log(`You are running Node.js version ${process.version}.`)
+
 if (!semver.satisfies(process.version, version)) {
   console.log(`Node.js version ${version} is required. You have ${process.version}.`)
   process.exit(1)

and these changes to my bot but should be made to probot/template:

diff --git a/package.json b/package.json
index 3aad438..18ec228 100644
--- a/package.json
+++ b/package.json
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@
     "test": "jest && standard"
   },
   "dependencies": {
+    "node": "^9.11.0",
     "probot": "^5.0.0"
   },
   "devDependencies": {
@@ -17,9 +18,6 @@
     "smee-client": "^1.0.1",
     "standard": "^10.0.3"
   },
-  "engines": {
-    "node" : "9.6.0"
-  },
   "standard": {
     "env": [
       "jest"

I cannot run the bot with the wrong version:

☁  eslint-disable-bot [master] ⚡ n 6
☁  eslint-disable-bot [master] ⚡ node --version
v6.14.1
☁  eslint-disable-bot [master] ⚡ npm start

> [email protected] start /Users/koddsson/koddsson/eslint-disable-bot
> probot run ./index.js

You are running Node.js version v9.11.0.

I was going to try to set up a small app on glitch but this method doesn't seem to work on their so maybe this isn't such a good solution.

Here's the app if you wanna take a look: https://abiding-coast.glitch.me/

I'd be interested in seeing if other platforms fail on this as well.

📚Previous work

probot/template#45

Welcome to Glitch!
A cool thing made with Glitch

zeke · 2018-04-12T18:52:26Z

Getting closer: https://support.glitch.com/t/irregular-support-for-semver-engines/3535/4?u=zeke

Glitch Support
Irregular support for semver engines
I took a look at semver-compare, and that’s definitely the cause of the issue. That module is designed to “compare two semver version strings”, not ranges. I think the glitch package manager would be better off using the semver module, specifically semver.maxSatisfying(versions, range), which returns the highest version in a list of node version numbers that satisfies the given range. See https://github.com/npm/node-semver#ranges-1

stale · 2018-06-11T20:25:08Z