SPIKE [2]: Error: error:0308010C:digital envelope routines::unsupported while running styleguidest

[theNerd247]

DoD:

This error doesn't occur while running styleguidest

Details:

The following error occurs when running the test application:

$ yarn start
yarn run v1.22.19
$ styleguidist server
ℹ ｢wds｣: Project is running at http://localhost:6060/
ℹ ｢wds｣: webpack output is served from undefined
ℹ ｢wds｣: Content not from webpack is served from /Users/noah/src/translation-helps-rcl
You can now view your style guide in the browser:

  Local:            http://localhost:6060/
  On your network:  http://172.16.103.170:6060/

Error: error:0308010C:digital envelope routines::unsupported
Error: error:0308010C:digital envelope routines::unsupported

From what I gather this is a compatibility issue between Node16 and Node18.

Current solutions involve either:

1. a global environment downgrade to Node16
2. Using tools like nvm
3. run the application using NODE_OPTIONS=--openssl-legacy-provider yarn start if they are running Node18.

Essentially this bring us to the question: Here are a few things to consider:

1. Should we begin upgrading this lib to support Node18
2. Should we begin enforcing Node versions in the package.json?
3. Do we still need Node16 support in this library? (3) above works for me and I do not notice any broken functionality once the styleguidest app builds and runs. I'm not sure what affect running higher versions of node will have on other machines though.
4. How wide-spread is this library and how many of those dependents use Node16? That is, what would the "damage report" be if we did an upgrade?

Personally I would recommend upgrading to at least Node18 as sticking to latest LTS versions are typically a good idea.

If we decide to stick with Node16 for now I would recommend we use the engines config in package.json to ensure global compatibility of this library across other apps. New developers (especially those new to JS development) would most likely have the latest version of the LTS Node installed and will run into this issue. There is no mention of using Node16 in the README, however it would be much better to enforce this technically (rather than relying on developers to parse a README file).

This same issue appears in other apps (such as gateway-edit) and could benefit from an upgrade away from Node16 as well.

[birchamp]

@theNerd247 has there been any further discussion on this issue?

[theNerd247]

Unfortunately, no.

[theNerd247]

@birchamp I've created a PR related to this issue as a result of the spike. Here's the current results:

• the styleguidist server works with no problems using Node 18 and webpack 5.
• I've created a PR to test our CI process with updating to Node 18 and webpack 5
  • I'm currently facing a problem with the CI failing as the Netlify portion is using Node 16 still. Upgrading Netlify in the CI for translation-helps-rcl to use Node 18 would be a next step.
• I still need to test to see if local development is doable while using Node 16 with webpack 5

[theNerd247]

This issue holds for gateway-edit as well. I've tested building with both Node16 and later versions of Node - none of which work. It appears upgrading to webpack 5 might be the solution regardless of the version of node used.