chore: align expected node engine with volta

[alisonailea]

Related Issue: n/a

Summary

Trying to build the Calcite Design System packages with node 16 fails. It requires at least node 18.

[jcfranco]

Should this be >=18.18.0?

[alisonailea]

anything over 18 will work. I wanted to keep it flexible but I can update

[benelan]

Specifying engines displays warnings for our users if they install CC with a node version that is not in the specified range. I'm pretty sure CC will still work on node v16 so we shouldn't throw warnings when people try to use it. Volta is what we use to specify our development version of Node.

ref: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v6/configuring-npm/package-json#engines

[alisonailea]

Specifying engines displays warnings for our users if they install CC with a node version that is not in the specified range. I'm pretty sure CC will still work on node v16 so we shouldn't throw warnings when people try to use it. Volta is what we use to specify our development version of Node.

ref: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v6/configuring-npm/package-json#engines

That only applies to the engine listed in the calcite-components package, which doesn't currently have an engine listed at all. In the CONTRIBUTING docs it does not say you must use Volta but rather directs you to use the major version of node listed in the package.json (implying the engine key).

[alisonailea]

I'm removing volta at this level because a calcite-components consumer will not have the context of the monorepo to reference the volta node version.

[benelan]

The volta version is not for the calcite consumer. It is for automatically using the correct version of Node during development. Can you please add it back?

[alisonailea]

since we should try to reserve the package.json published in the node module to only information needed by the consumer I think we should still leave volta out of the monorepo sub-packages package.json

[benelan]

If Volta adds another place to specify the development versions of node/npm then we can switch to that. But for now package.json is the only place to store pinned versions. We need to keep the volta field in CC's package.json so everyone who uses Volta will use the correct version of node.

We are following the recommendation for monorepo setups in Volta's doc:
https://docs.volta.sh/advanced/workspaces

The volta field in our package.json has no impact on our consumers, even if they use Volta. They would need to pin a version on their end.

Can you add volta back here and then I'll approve the PR? Thanks!

[alisonailea]

after another discussion with Ben over teams I'm adding volta back to calcite-components

[benelan]

That only applies to the engine listed in the calcite-components package, which doesn't currently have an engine listed at all. In the CONTRIBUTING docs it does not say you must use Volta but rather directs you to use the major version of node listed in the package.json (implying the engine key).

Following up on our Teams conversation, it looks like there was never an engines field before switching to the monorepo. I must have added it when copy/pasting from somewhere 😅

We can remove engines from the root and the newly added one in CC's package.json. Setting engines specifies the supported versions of node for using the package, and there aren't any packages being published from the root of the monorepo. I hesitate to add one to CC without doing the proper testing to determine the oldest supported version.

The supported versions for usage and the supported versions for development can be completely different, so I don't want to use the engines field for something it wasn't designed to do.

We can update the CONTRIBUTING doc to specify that the version listed under the volta field should be used for development.

[benelan]

Awesome, thanks for the catch!