Publishing an npm package that strictly requires a minimum Node version

Question

If I write a package I am certain requires Node 4 or higher, I don't want it to be installable with older versions.

I know about the package.json engines field, but that's just advisory (only causes a warning). And enginesStrict has been deprecated.

So what can I do?

One idea is to have a preinstall script that checks the Node version and errors if it's not high enough, preventing installation from continuing. Are there any problems with doing that? And is there a better way?

Answer 1

If you want a good experience, make your CLI entrypoint standard ES5 and CommonJS, detect the node version ( process.version ), and print a detailed and helpful message then exit non-zero. Keep in mind your module may get installed with some node version then the user futzes with nvm or their PATH or whatever and then runs your code under a different version. Thus I think failing nicely at run time is the most important thing. You can also choose to fail at install time if you like.