Subject: Re: [bug#53414] [PATCH] update Node LTS to 16.13.2

From: Maxime Devos <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2022 16:59:24 +0100

Attila Lendvai schreef op vr 25-02-2022 om 13:09 [+0000]:
> > Still, the latest LTS (v16) seems better to me since it is newer
> > and will be
> > supported for longer.
> 
> with packages like nodejs one often needs both older and newer
> versions in
> parallel to also be able to build projects that haven't been ported
> to the new
> nodejs.

Ignoring bootstrapping, this does not seem to be the case so far in
Guix -- the only results of "git grep -F \#\:node gnu" is

# 7 lines
gnu/packages/node.scm:     `(#:node ,node-bootstrap

so it seems that, except for bootstrapping, a single version of 'node'
suffices.

If it turns out that some packages still require v14, then we can
discuss that upstream, patch the package and/or introduce a 'node-14'
package variant, like we do with, say, autoconf, bcftools and gcc.

Actually 'gcc' does not point to the latest version, but to the
slightly older 10.3.0, but that's only due to core-updates concerns
and perhaps because upstream does -Werror too often.  And 'autoconf'
is not autoconf-2.71 because ‘this is the renaissance version, which is
not widelt supported yet’.  But AFAICT, there are no compatibility
concerns with v14->v16.

Greetings,
Maxime.