[No Issue] update node version docs

[timbot1789]

Scott found an issue with our unit tests running node version 16.4. We don't want to be supporting several different versions of node. However, our docs say we support any version of Node 16. We should instead peg our project to the most recent LTS release of Node 16, which is node 16.20.2. I've updated docs to show that.

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• Rationale for picking node 16 is because it is the latest version of node supported by our Inrupt libraries. Using later versions causes warning messages to be thrown in console when launching the react server.
• Node 16 hit end of life on september 11, 2023. That means it is no longer receiving any updates of any kind. If we can, we should try to move to the newest LTS release of node (20). However, that will require removing the Inrupt libraries from the system, as they do not seem to be receiving version updates.
• The docs for Inrupt's libraries say that they support node 18. However, their dependencies do not support that version.

[andycwilliams]

Just for my own understanding, do points 2 and 3 pose significant issues going forward? Is the plan just to stick with Node 16 and hope Inrupt updates?

Frankly, I'm not sure whether committing to an older version of Node is a hindrance or not.

[timbot1789]

Just for my own understanding, do points 2 and 3 pose significant issues going forward? Is the plan just to stick with Node 16 and hope Inrupt updates?

Frankly, I'm not sure whether committing to an older version of Node is a hindrance or not.

For a volunteer project that doesn't have a production release, and is using node simply to deploy a react app, it's not a big problem. The main concern in using an unsupported node version is a data breach. But our user data isn't on the node server, it's on the solid server, so there's not much to breach.

If this had a production release, the unsupported node server would be an issue.

[leekahung]

Just checked in a local branch for Development with node 18 (18.18.2) and node 20 (20.9.0).

While I'm probably stabbing in the dark here, but I've ran npm run test with the newer node versions just to see if it'll break any of our limited tests. With v16 ran all tests just fine. With v18 and v20 breaks tests related to webcrypto which is imported from a 'crypto' module.

The major different between the v16 and newer versions is that "oidc-provider@7.10.6" is unsupported.

Update: Just checked they seem unrelated. But it's interesting to see the different node versions running the same unit tests with v20 breaking the unit tests related to crypto:

and v18 and v16 passes all the tests:

[timbot1789]

Just checked in a local branch for Development with node 18 (18.18.2) and node 20 (20.9.0).

~While I'm probably stabbing in the dark here, but I've ran npm run test with the newer node versions just to see if it'll break any of our limited tests. With v16 ran all tests just fine. With v18 and v20 breaks tests related to webcrypto which is imported from a 'crypto' module.~

The major different between the v16 and newer versions is that "oidc-provider@7.10.6" is unsupported.

Update: Just checked they seem unrelated. But it's interesting to see the different node versions running the same unit tests with v20 breaking the unit tests related to crypto:

and v18 and v16 passes all the tests:

Yeah oidc-provider isn't related to webcrypto. Odd that webcrypto breaks support though. That's a node library (not a dependency). That's dead code anyway, though. I'll remove it.

And I think you're right that we're probably fine running the app in a higher version of node. The warning message is just annoying.