Is there a way to check node and npm versions before a npm install?

Question

I want to only allow certain version of node and npm before the user can run his npm install on my module.

In the NPM documentation , there is an engine attribute, dedicated to this task:

  "engines": {
    "node": ">=4.0.0",
    "npm": ">=3.0.0"
  }

These parameters will only allow node and npm versions up to 4 and 3.

However, the documentation says that the engine-strict attribute should be enabled in order to check the versions. On engine-strict , it is said that :

This feature was deprecated with npm 3.0.0

So, is there a way, with npm3, to define minimal Node and NPM versions for a module?

Answer 1

So, is there a way, with npm3, to define minimal Node and NPM versions for a module?

engines does that. It's just that it does it by A) Outputting an advisory message warning the user if their system isn't up-to-scratch, and B) Failing if the user has set the engine-strict config flag .

All the documentation is saying is that engineStrict is no longer supported to push the user around. :-) If they want to ignore the advisory messages and not use the engine-strict config flag, then caveat user .

Answer 2

Yarn checks the engine out of the box at the time of installation. But with npm, you may have to write a custom validator at this moment for checking node versions before firing a script.

export function verifyNodeVersion(version) {
  const nodeVersion = process.versions.node;
  if (!nodeVersion.startsWith(`${version}.`)) {
    throw new Error(
      `Incorrect version of Node found: ${nodeVersion}, Expected: v${version}.x`
    );
  }
  console.log('Current Node version:', nodeVersion);
  return true;
}

And call the function in the entry points.