Installing Yeoman generator fails with Node 10.18.1

Question

This evening I thought I would update my SPFx Dev Toolchain:

install latest Node 10.xx LTS (using NVM as recommended by AC or David Warner MVPs) Better Node.js Install Management with Node Version Manager.

nvm install 10.18.1
nvm use 10.18.1
npm install gulp-cli-g 

Next, I attempt to update Yeoman and gulp.

npm install -g yo gulp

npm WARN optional SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: [email protected] (node_modules\gulp\node_modules\fsevents):
npm WARN notsup SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: Unsupported platform for [email protected]: wanted {"os":"darwin","arch ":"any"} (current: {"os":"win32","arch":"x64"})

npm ERR! code EEXIST
npm ERR! path C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\gulp\bin\gulp.js
npm ERR! dest C:\Program Files\nodejs\gulp
npm ERR! EEXIST: file already exists, cmd shim 'C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\gulp\bin\gulp.js' -> 'C:\Progr am Files\nodejs\gulp'
npm ERR! File exists: C:\Program Files\nodejs\gulp
npm ERR! Remove the existing file and try again, or run npm
npm ERR! with --force to overwrite files recklessly.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR! C:\Users\danie\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache_logs\2020-01-12T20_54_30_643Z-debug.log

Note you don't get this issue with the Node installs: 10.16.3 or 10.17.0. So far it only is 10.18.0 and 10.18.1 that causes my heartache 😫Has anyone found a workaround?

Answer 1

I don't think 10.18 is supported - I'm using 10.16.3. I know the instructions say "LTS" - but that doesn't seem to be true at the moment, so the documentation probably needs updating. We'll probably have to wait for an update to SPFx to resolve this. Even then there is always the risk that Node bump their LTS again and something stops working.