Recommended version of NodeJS and npm for Widget Development

Vijhay D

Hi Everyone!

Is there a particular version of NodeJS and npm that I'm suppose to install on my CS instance to be able to create the necessary folder structures for widget development. I understand there is a development project (Folder) structure that will be  generated by csui-extension.  I'm running into compatibility issues with some of the node modules that get downloaded as part of the npm installation process. Not sure if I'm missing something here. 



TIA!
Vijhay  Devarajan.

Karen Weir

I'm adding a comment to your post @Vijhay Devarajan to bring focus on your question

Ferdinand Prantl

Thanks, @Karen Weir, it pushed this up in my mailbox after the Xmas vacation :-)

The best bet for Smart UI development is using one of the two most recent the Node.js LTS versions. This is what the OpenText developers do. Today it means 12 (maintenance) or 14 (active). Versions of Smart UI that we released during the last year were built with Node.js 12, for example.

The project generator for Smart UI extensions depends on a very old versions of the Yeoman Generator and other related NPM modules and that is why problems are likely to occur, when it is used today. A bug about this has been already filed for the Smart UI SDK project, but I am not sure, when it will be fixed.

My workaround was generating the project with Node.js 10 without installing the dependencies (which would fail), then switching to Node.js 12, and continue installing the dependencies and building the project. You probably use a Node.js version manager to be able to choose the version of Node.js flexibly, like nvm on Linux or Mac, or nvs or nvm-windows on Windows. For example:

nvm use 10
yo csui-extension --skip-install
nvm use 12
npm i
grunt