Alternative environment variable due to warning on `npm_config_nodedir`

[jellelicht]

See title.
Somewhere since npm@11.x.y, npm now warns on seeing 'unknown' configuration options.
Setting nodedir in your npmrc (or setting the environment variable npm_config_nodedir) gives us a warning that nodedir is not supported, and will be an error Real Soon (tm):

 npm warn Unknown user config "nodedir". This will stop working in the next major version of npm.

Provided I want to set up the nodedir for scripts that end up calling scripts than end up calling scripts than run npm ¹, how will I be able to set up a simple environment variable that allow node-gyp to find the relevant node files in the future when the current approach will no longer work?

Footnotes

1. So I don't have control over the actual invocation of the npm, and therefore can't simply pass an option. ↩

[lukekarrys]

This is a good question and one we will need to figure out how to handle in node-gyp. I'm going to close this as a duplicate of #3156 so we can consolidate future discussions to a single issue.

[CamJN]

This needs to be reopened as #3156 is closed now and #3196 did not address this.

[lukekarrys]

Here's how you would accomplish this now that #3196 is merged. I'm running a local copy of node-gyp and grepping the output on stderr to confirm that it is picking up the new environment variable.

> export npm_package_config_node_gyp_nodedir=/MY_NODEDIR

> ./bin/node-gyp.js configure --loglevel=verbose 2>&1 | grep 'get node dir'
gyp verb get node dir compiling against specified --nodedir dev files: /MY_NODEDIR

Also I've confirmed that exporting this environment variable does not show any warnings from npm:

> export npm_package_config_node_gyp_nodedir=/MY_NODEDIR

> npm --version
11.5.2

> export npm_config_nodedir=/FROM_NPM

> npm --version
npm warn Unknown env config "nodedir". This will stop working in the next major version of npm.
11.5.2

@CamJN Can you write an example for your use-case showing what is not achievable with this new functionality? I can't figure out what I might be missing.

[CamJN]

Ah my bad, I misread. I set nodedir instead of devdir and thought the env vars weren't working.

[lukekarrys]

Thanks for confirming. I also misread originally when I linked the issues as duplicates. This and #3192 should have been linked (and one kept open) instead of #3196 since that might be a slightly different issue with nodegit. Sorry for the confusion.

[cclauss]

Nice teamwork!