Add Node 12 & Drop Node 6 & 8 Support

[erisu]

Feature Request

I would like to start discussing and planning for:

• Dropping Node 6 Support
• Dropping Node 8 Support
• Adding Node 12 Support

Motivation Behind Feature

The Node team currently has documented:

• Node 6's End of Life: 2019-04-30
• Node 8's End of Life: Targeted date December 2019
• Node 12's Initial Release: Targeted date April 23rd 2019

You can read more about Node's release schedule here.

Feature Description

• Public Announcement via Blog Post

May 2019?

• Update AppVeyor/Travis CI to test with Node.js 6.x, 8.x, 10.x, and 12.x.
• Update requirement check and notify users of Node.js 6.x deprecation. chore: node warning on version < 8 cordova-cli#454

Fall 2019

• Update requirement check and notify users of Node.js 8.x deprecation. chore: node deprecation warning for <10 cordova-cli#458

Winter 2019

• Removed Node.js 6.x support.
• Removed Node.js 8.x support.
• Added Node.js 12.x support.
• Platforms, tools, and core libraries to bump up a major version.
• Update AppVeyor/Travis CI to test only Node.js 10.x, and 12.x.

Alternatives or Workarounds

• Undefined

Implementation Progress

Platforms

• cordova-android
• cordova-browser
• cordova-electron
• cordova-ios
• cordova-osx
• cordova-windows

Plugins

• cordova-plugin-battery-status (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-battery-status#80)
• cordova-plugin-camera (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-camera#576)
• cordova-plugin-device (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-device#120)
• cordova-plugin-dialogs (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-dialogs#136)
• cordova-plugin-file (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-file#384)
• cordova-plugin-geolocation (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-geolocation#193)
• cordova-plugin-inappbrowser (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-inappbrowser#659)
• cordova-plugin-media (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-media#274)
• cordova-plugin-media-capture (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-media-capture#165)
• cordova-plugin-network-information (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-network-information#104)
• cordova-plugin-screen-orientation (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-screen-orientation#61)
• cordova-plugin-splashscreen (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-splashscreen#252)
• cordova-plugin-statusbar (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-statusbar#182)
• cordova-plugin-vibration (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-vibration#86)
• cordova-plugin-whitelist (ci(travis): updates Node.js version cordova-plugin-whitelist#52)
• cordova-plugin-wkwebview-engine (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-plugin-wkwebview-engine#136)

Tooling

• cordova-cli
• cordova-coho
• cordova-common
• cordova-create
• cordova-fetch
• cordova-js
• cordova-lib
• cordova-node-xcode (ci(travis): removes Node.js v6 and v8 from testing cordova-node-xcode#90)
• cordova-paramedic (ci: updates Node.js versions cordova-paramedic#198)
• cordova-plugin-test-framework (chore: test node 10 to 12 cordova-plugin-test-framework#48)
• cordova-plugman
• cordova-serve

Low Priority & Non-blocker:

• cordova-docs

Excluded:

• cordova-app-hello-world
• cordova-test-platform
• cordova-mobile-spec
• cordova-status
• cordova
• any unused, outdated, or deprecated repos

[janpio]

Some data from telemtry.cordova.io to enable us to make an informed decision:

New users:

Node Major Version	New Users
12	8	0,01%
11	7491	9,76%
10	28488	37,11%
9	1760	2,29%
8	24547	31,97%
7	1003	1,31%
6	5800	7,56%
5	146	0,19%
4	7509	9,78%
0	18	0,02%
	76770	100%

Users with node <8: 18,86%

All users:

Node Major Version	Users
12	8	0,00%
11	16061	9,33%
10	59900	34,81%
9	5250	3,05%
8	62589	36,37%
7	2194	1,27%
6	13085	7,60%
5	333	0,19%
4	12607	7,33%
0	59	0,03%
	172086	100%

Users with node <8: 16,43%

Context

I included node 7 here in the calculations which node version to drop, as it was EOL on 2017-06-30 already.

All data from the last 30 days, the absolute numbers don't really have a specific meaning, as well as "Users" is undefined. The relative data is the important bit.

---

The amount of users to be "left behind" would be similar to what we did/do with Cordova CLI 9, where we also remove ~8-10% of current and new user's node version.

So it would definitely hit a lot of people, but as this is based on official EOL and end of maintenance, this should be a positive thing for them.

[brody4hire]

As a nit-picking comment I would favor adding Node.js 12 and dropping Node.js 6 in separate commits in each repo. I would also favor adding Node.js 12 before dropping Node.js 6.

I think this would make it a little easier to cherry-pick the changes into a maintenance release branch if needed.

[erisu]

Blog Announcement Reference: apache/cordova-docs#965
--> Updated Image Timeline: apache/cordova-docs#967

[brody4hire]

From apache/cordova-android#781 there are comments that we may want to drop Node.js 8 support at the same time. This should probably be discussed on the list (dev@cordova.apache.org).

[erisu]

This had already been discussed and casually voted on. Blog post is already released.

• Mailing List Thread
• Blog Post

[erisu]

Closing as complete. The important repos were completed and remaining has PRs