[internal] CONTRIBUTING.md - is Node 14 still correct?

[AnnaKornfeldSimpson]

@claremacrae I know you updated part of CONTRIBUTING.md recently - can you confirm whether the following line about using Node 14 is still essentially correct?

obsidian-tasks/CONTRIBUTING.md

Line 82 in b642736

This project uses Node 14.x, if you need to use a different version, look at using `nvm` to manage your Node versions. If you are using `nvm`, you can install the 14.x version of Node with `nvm install 14.19.1; nvm use 14.19.1`.

I have been doing my dev on node 18 without issue, though I switched to 14 when I saw this and everything seemed ok there also, except for having to re-install yarn with a markedly earlier version of npm. Most relevantly, though, running process.versions inside Obsidian stable 0.14.15 tells me that Obsidian stable is currently using node 16.13.2 - so should we really still be on 14?
Thanks!

PS: I said essentially because my nvm told me that there were a couple of patch versions (right-most version number increase) above what was is listed in the doc so nvm install 14; nvm use 14 put me on 14.19.3.

[claremacrae]

HI @AnnaKornfeldSimpson.

So the the thing is, I'm a C++ and Python developer with decades of experience and knowledge that transfers well to maintaining code bases in other languages (like good testing knowledge, code design experience, incrementally moving code safely to improve design....).

So in taking over Tasks, there has been a ton to learn about TypeScript and Jest, JS infrastructure in general, the last of which I have barely even touched the surface of it... I'm definitely at the "I don't know what I don't know" stage in a lot of this....

So my default answer for the foreseeable future on all your excellent questions about Node, dependencies, and similar is going to be "oh, I didn't know that, please tell me what you recommend, and if you can, please feel free to create a PR or an issue directly... " 😅

[AnnaKornfeldSimpson]

@claremacrae Unfortunately, you've provably been dealing with Node/Typescript/Jest longer than I have, given your community talk, so I cannot help. My transferable code-reading and debugging skills from other programming languages/environments leave me quite unequipped to understand the JS ecosystem. I am treating this as a learning experience and asking questions whenever a couple hours of internet searching do not resolve my problem, since as a student I do not run into test & maintenance experts often at all! (And then trying to give back some chore-work in return for your very valuable time and thoughts!) Along the same lines, I do not expect folks to always know the answers to my questions, since we students spend much of our time discussing the things we do not yet really know! :)

Specifically on this question, I think maybe @sytone contributed to that part of the documentation - and perhaps might have a recommendation here on whether it makes sense to upgrade from Node 14 to Node 16 (or even later)? Or I would also be appreciative of links where I can learn more.

[claremacrae]

Thanks @AnnaKornfeldSimpson!

I think @sytone was documenting the current situation, rather than saying it should be using 14.

Based on what you said in the original post, it seems like moving to at least 16 would be good. I have no opinion on whether to move to 18.

It seems like 14 is still in maintenance, so not really a problem????
https://nodejs.org/en/about/releases/

May I suggest that we update after the next release is done, as I'm fairly close to publishing the next release (it's blocked on needing the two new documentation pages).

When we do update, it would be good if we could consider changing CONTRIBUTING to point to whatever file(s) that determine the Node version we use (for example https://github.com/obsidian-tasks-group/obsidian-tasks/blob/main/.github/workflows/release.yml) - to avoid the need to remember to update the contributing page next time we update node...