Unsupported engine node / NPM only when building in Docker

Question

I have a dependency in my package.json which itself has the following dependency:

"node-rdkafka": "^2.5.0",

Using nvm on my local machine and setting my node version to 8.9.1, and my npm version is 5.5.1, I can successfully run

npm install [email protected]

But when running the same thing (i.e npm install) from within my docker image:

FROM node:10.13.0-alpine or FROM node:8.9.1-alpine

I get the following error:

npm ERR! notsup Unsupported engine for [email protected]: wanted: {"node":">=12.0.0"} (current: {"node":"10.13.0","npm":"6.4.1"})
npm ERR! notsup Not compatible with your version of node/npm: [email protected]
npm ERR! notsup Not compatible with your version of node/npm: [email protected]
npm ERR! notsup Required: {"node":">=12.0.0"}
npm ERR! notsup Actual:   {"npm":"6.4.1","node":"10.13.0"}

Any ideas about this inconsistency?

I clearly dont need a node version this high. But it says I do.

Rurik

are you sure that it is working correctly on your local environment (the one with nvm) from the logs you could expect that there were probably some breaking changes that should not be allowed, if anything it's not an issue with docker but with your local node install that tricks the library to ignore node version – Archeology

the weird thing is that the minimal setup (simple docker file with FROM node:10.13.0 RUN npm install [email protected]) builds correctly for me, granted i don't use alpine because rdkafka required python executable and some other stuff i don't want to deal with settting up... could you provide entire package.json and Dockerfile ? – Archeology

Hmm.. I still get the same problem with FROM node:10.13.0 – Rurik

FYI it was because there was a setting engine-strict=true in .npmrc file – Rurik

Answer 1

Try to remove package-lock.json before npm install in Docker

rm package-lock.json
npm i

Cere

That doesn't fix it for me. – Precursor

It also defeats the purpose of package-lock.json. – Aggri

Answer 2

The engines property in the package.json allows us to establish a range of versions.

With >=12 is asking for a node with version 12 or greater.

Therefore, the solution would be to install the requested version:

FROM node:12

I recommend reviewing the versions currently available on Docker here.

Fernand

Answer 3

When building old apps with a more recent nodejs, it might work perfectly fine to use older packages which had requirements on nodejs engine.

Karma package, for instance, has this requirement : required: { node: '0.10 || 0.12 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7' }. But it works ok in nodejs 16.

In this case, there is a setting to transform EBADENGINE into a error or warning. It works in nodejs 16 at least.

Add or remove this line in your ~/.npmrc : engine-strict=true.

I added this flag following a tutorial, and didn't realize its impact until I wanted to build an older app.

Padauk