npm ERR! semver.simplifyRange is not a function

Question

Trying to follow the Express getting started tutorial.

I generated an app and ran npm install following the provided instructions.

> npx express-generator --view=pug myapp
> npm install
npm ERR! semver.simplifyRange is not a function
npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /home/user/.npm/_logs/2021-03-21T04_58_39_577Z-debug.log

The relevant portion from the log

555 http fetch GET 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/longest/-/longest-1.0.1.tgz 706ms
556 timing reifyNode:node_modules/longest Completed in 751ms
557 timing metavuln:cache:get:security-advisory:transformers:qlM2fO34VL+rWNeim/6QsbBJFfHtRf4Z7FAoL1JLqVXlvg5FMRxw1WstcKR09WDDJCiJsPPrdRJugEOTZ6eGZA== Completed in 22ms
558 verbose stack TypeError: semver.simplifyRange is not a function
558 verbose stack     at Advisory.[calculateRange] (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/metavuln-calculator/lib/advisory.js:191:16)
558 verbose stack     at Advisory.load (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/metavuln-calculator/lib/advisory.js:148:28)
558 verbose stack     at Calculator.[calculate] (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/metavuln-calculator/lib/index.js:59:14)
558 verbose stack     at async Promise.all (index 0)
558 verbose stack     at async Map.[init] (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/arborist/lib/audit-report.js:177:7)
558 verbose stack     at async Map.run (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/arborist/lib/audit-report.js:105:7)

New to node and I have no idea what this means. Looks to be a problem with npm and not Express?

I tried running npm cache clean --force and deleting node_modules but neither helped.

If it is relevant, npm version 7.6.3 and node version 15.11.0.

Answer 1

My solution was to install older version of semver and update npm itself to version 7.7.0. I used the commands:

sudo npm install -g semver@7.2.0

and then

sudo npm install -g npm@7.7.0

After it worked

Answer 2

After another another round of updates from the package manager, I ran into more problems (See this question ).

From the question linked above I found installing node directly from the nodejs website to be a more permanent and robust solution.