Notice to upgrade pnpm should have a warning if new node version is required about pnpm

[mika76]

Node.js v16 support dropped. Use at least Node.js v18.12.

Lockfile version bumped to v7.

Support for lockfile v5 is dropped. Use pnpm v8 to convert lockfile v5 to lockfile v6

What is it with you guys just dropping support for things and skipping node versions? Why? You do realise this affects people right? Not just development environments but build agents as well.

I'm pretty sure backwards compatibility can be managed better? At least put a note in the release notes on why support for a version is dropped...

(PS I don't mean for this comment/issue to come off as overly critical - I love what you guys do and appreciate it - but a simple upgrade should not break everything)

[zkochan]

Node.js 17 is not an LTS version, when Node.js 18 came out it stopped receiving updates, so don't expect long term support for non-lts versions.

It does affect people, hence it is done in a breaking upgrade.

You can use the standalone version of pnpm that is bundled to an executable. In that case you don't care about which node.js version is on the system. Instruction are here: https://pnpm.io/installation#using-a-standalone-script

[weyert]

Maybe we want to clarify the change log so it says
Node.js v16 and v17 support dropped?

[mcmxcdev]

What is it with you guys just dropping support for things and skipping node versions? Why? You do realise this affects people right? Not just development environments but build agents as well.

I'm pretty sure backwards compatibility can be managed better? At least put a note in the release notes on why support for a version is dropped...

@mika76 pnpm is actually very strict about following semver requirements. Node versions get dropped only for major version updates of pnpm (same like it is a common practice for other popular projects). The whole point of major version releases is to raise awareness to the fact that there can be changes which are not backwards compatible. If you blindly upgrade your dependencies to a new major version, you should be clear about the implications of that.

You can see the current release schedule on e.g. https://nodejs.org/en/about/previous-releases, which will tell you that Node v18 and lower are already in maintenance mode, and Node v20 is the active LTS version. "Use at least Node.js v18.12." in a changelog should make it pretty clear for you what is supported still ;)

[mika76]

My question is why stop supporting them? Just because node doesn't support their old version doesn't mean pnpm would stop working on them, they have been battle tested and would still work without issue.

Or rather my question is not why stop "supporting" but why hard-lock us from running with them. Support could be stopped officially but pnpm will not run at all if using those node versions, which is strange to me. Why not put in a hard lock once a bug is actually found which is affected by that node version. You don't see app's putting in a hard lock on working on Windows 8 because it's "out of support" by Microsoft.

And if there is an actual reason to stop it from running on them, then make it clear somewhere why.