Change NPM version used in Could Manager Frontend Pipelines

[JakubIz]

Hello,

our team is using Frontend Pipelines to deploy our frontend code to AEMaaCS, as described here: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-cloud-service/content/implementing/dev...

We would like to migrate our project to the newer nodejs, and npm versions, but it seems, by default, Cloud Manager pipelines are using an older npm version (not sure which one exactly), because our project that has been migrated to npm 10.x.x, no longer builds on the Cloud Manager.

I see there is a way to set the version of Node with a special env variable (as mentioned in the article from the link above), but is there a way to do the same with NPM?

How can we check which version of NPM our Frontend Pieplines are currently using? And how can we change it?

Cheers,

Jakub

[arunpatidar]

Hi @JakubIz 

you can set the desire version in POM as well

https://github.com/adobe/aem-guides-wknd/blob/f8ef2bfac0e8760a8b571c951e45fb1f06c8f5c7/ui.frontend/p...

https://github.com/eirslett/frontend-maven-plugin?tab=readme-ov-file#installing-node-and-npm 

[JakubIz]

I dont think this works with Frontend Pipelines approach.

[EstebanBustamante]

Hi,

I don't think you can change the version of NPM through a Cloud Manager variable. The Node versions are installed and available at runtime in Cloud Manager so that you can swap between versions via the Cloud Manager variable. I believe what @arunpatidar  mentioned is the way to go. You can swap the Node/NPM version in the main pom.xml. Check for the below lines in the pom.xml and update the nodeVersion and npmVersion configurations accordingly.

<plugin>
                    <groupId>com.github.eirslett</groupId>
                    <artifactId>frontend-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                    <version>${frontend-maven-plugin.version}</version>
                    <configuration>
                        <nodeVersion>v16.17.0</nodeVersion>
                        <npmVersion>8.15.0</npmVersion>
                    </configuration>
                    <executions>
                        <execution>
                            <id>install node and npm</id>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>install-node-and-npm</goal>
                            </goals>
                        </execution>
                        <execution>
                            <id>npm ci</id>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>npm</goal>
                            </goals>
                            <configuration>
                              <arguments>ci</arguments>
                            </configuration>
                        </execution>
                    </executions>
                </plugin>

On the other hand, the way I think you can verify which version of NPM is being used in Cloud Manager is by adding an extra step to print that information in the log. Something like this worked locally for me, it should work in the pipeline as well:

<!-- ui.frontend/pom.xml -->
<build>
        <sourceDirectory>src/main/content/jcr_root</sourceDirectory>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>com.github.eirslett</groupId>
                <artifactId>frontend-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <!-- Look for "Esteban Check NPM version" in the build log -->
                        <id>Esteban Check NPM version</id> 
                        <phase>validate</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>npm</goal>
                        </goals>
                        <configuration>
                            <arguments>-v</arguments>
                        </configuration>
                    </execution>

Hope this helps

[kautuk_sahni]

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