npm update broke node-addon-api tests on AIX

[mhdawson]

Version

v18.8.0

Platform

AIX

Subsystem

No response

What steps will reproduce the bug?

npm install pre-commit

How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?

100%

What is the expected behavior?

package is installed

What do you see instead?

npm ERR! code 127
npm ERR! path /home/iojs/build/workspace/node-test-node-addon-api-new/nodes/aix72-ppc64/node_modules/pre-commit
npm ERR! command failed
npm ERR! command sh -c -- node install.js
npm ERR! node install.js: --: not found

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR! /home/iojs/build/workspace/citgm-smoker/npm_cache/_logs/2022-09-06T21_20_27_438Z-debug-0.log
iojs@nodejs04:[/home/iojs/build/workspace/node-test-node-addon-api-new/nodes/aix72-ppc64]node-v18.8.0-aix-ppc64/bin/node node-v18.7.0-aix-ppc64/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js install pre-commit

Additional information

This can out of looking at node-addon-api failures on AIX - like this - https://ci.nodejs.org/job/node-test-node-addon-api-new/nodes=aix72-ppc64/6348/console

pre-commit is one of the packages in the package.json for node-addon-api

[mhdawson]

From some investigation, it looks to be the update to npm 8.18.0. Using that npm version with an older/newer version of Node.js results in the error. Using 8.15.0 (which was in the previous Node.js version) with a newer or older version of Node.js does not result in the error.

[mhdawson]

Looking at what is new in that version of npm I see - npm/cli#5297 which seems to be the cause.

Reverting that allows the install to work.

[mhdawson]

Setting npm config set script-shell "bash" seems to allow the install to succeed.

[mhdawson]

@lux01 can you comment on whether the behaviour we are seeing is what you expected based on the fix for npm/cli#5297 ?

The tests used to pass I believe because the node-addon-api job set the shell to bash before doing the install. npm/cli#5297 seems to have caused npm to ingore the current shell by default.

I've fixed the node-addon-api test job by setting the script-shell as part of the job, but not sure if that the new behaviour is as expected.

[lux01]

@mhdawson Sorry my GitHub notifications don't seem to be working for some reason.

The setting npm config set script-shell "bash" combined with npm/cli#5297 is the work around for a regression introduced by npm/run-script#98. This latter PR implicitly made npm require a bash compatible shell (-- is not POSIX compatible) and so has broken a number of less common platforms.

As it stands npm@8.17.0 just doesn't really work on AIX, IBM i, FreeBSD, and perhaps many others. npm@8.18.0 and above work provided that a bash compatible shell has been installed and has been set as the script-shell thanks to npm/cli#5297.

See npm/run-script#103 and npm/cli#5489.

[mhdawson]

Ok, so onced we get an update to 8.18.0 things will be resolved and even after then the work around I put in place for the node-addon-api test will continue to work so I think we can close this. @lux01 thanks for the info.