How to force npm to use different node-gyp version when installing packages?

Question

I am running Node 16.13.2 LTS with Visual Studio 2022. During the installation of a package, node-gyp is triggered and fails.

npm ERR! command C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /d /s /c node build.js || nodejs build.js
npm ERR! gyp info it worked if it ends with ok
npm ERR! gyp info using node-gyp@8.3.0
npm ERR! gyp info using node@16.13.2 | win32 | x64
npm ERR! gyp info find Python using Python version 3.9.4 found at "C:\Users\ahboy\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\python.exe"
npm ERR! gyp ERR! find VS
npm ERR! gyp ERR! find VS msvs_version not set from command line or npm config
npm ERR! gyp ERR! find VS VCINSTALLDIR not set, not running in VS Command Prompt
npm ERR! gyp ERR! find VS unknown version "undefined" found at "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Professional"
npm ERR! gyp ERR! find VS could not find a version of Visual Studio 2017 or newer to use
npm ERR! gyp ERR! find VS looking for Visual Studio 2015
npm ERR! gyp ERR! find VS - not found

I went to do some research and found out that node-gyp@8.3.0 does not support VS 2022. Only version node-gyp@8.4 does. So I started to try to get npm to use node-gyp@8.4.0 but nothing works including this advice from node-gyp github page to install node-gyp globally and point the path in npmrc file.

So what can be done to force npm to use different node-gyp versions when installing packages?

Answer 1

I had a similar issue, what solved it for me was using nvm: Node Version Manager to install Node version 14, alongside the latest one. The repository I was cloning had a lot of dependencies. Also, I did not need to be on the bleeding edge of progress with the latest Node version.

Here is further resource on how to install and use nvm: Installing nvm on Windows .

Answer 2

If you installed latest node-gyp .

Check the version of node-gyp both in terminal (Powershell) and vscode terminal. One of them should be pointing to the 8.4 and another one to 8.3 So the terminal that you are running the app, looks like is not recognizing the path of 8.4 version.

Answer 3

What does the package.json in the package your installing show for the node-gyp dependency version? Also look at all subdependencies of those dependencies to see if any of those reference version 8.3. I've ran into this same issue as well on windows. If you can't get your version to update, you can also install visual studio build tools 2017 and set your msvs_version to 2017 and it should pick that up for you. No need to install the full vs2017, just the build tools will do fine.

Answer 4

Declare your dependency on the newer version of node-gyp in your package.json file. Add this to your dependency block:

 "node-gyp"              : "^8.4.1",

I did exactly this about an hour ago to get our github actions CI tests working since the switch of 'windows-latest' became windows server 2022.