engine-preflight

Simple tool to enforce local node version compatibility with your app.

Installation & Use

In your project directory

npm install engine-preflight

Then add this script to your package.json:

"postinstall": "check-engine"

And if you haven't already, define your node version requirements, like so:

"engines": {
  "node": ">=12.13.0 <13"
}

npm engine documentation

Using the engine settings and the postinstall script above, running npm install or npm ci to install modules will throw an error (after installation).

For example

Say you have node 10.16.3 installed and tried to run npm install for the project running "postinstall": "check-engine", here's the error output you'd receive:

> [email protected] postinstall /ProjectDir/coolApp
> check-engine

> Node version requirements ">=12.13.0 <13" are NOT satisfied with the current version of node: "v10.16.3"

  Please update your node version and try again.

npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! errno 1
npm ERR! [email protected] postinstall: `check-engine`
npm ERR! Exit status 1
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Failed at the [email protected] postinstall script.

Cautionary notes

• Placing the engine-preflight module in devDependencies may sound like a good idea, however, if you project is ever install as a module or via methods like npm install git+ssh://..., the installation will fail on postinstall because devDependencies are not installed when installing as a module.

• It may seem like a good idea to place the check-engine call in a preinstall script, it is not*. The command relies on the engine-preflight module being installed, which means the check-engine preflight script would only pass if running npm install or npm ci on a repo that already has engine-preflight installed.

* Of course you could install engine-preflight globally to get around that problem.