Rails 6.0.2 with Node 8 on AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Question

The newest version of Rails, 6.0.2, comes with a package.json that uses rails/webpack version 4.2.2 which requires Node 8.

The prevailing internet wisdom seems to be to use RAILS_SKIP_ASSET_COMPILATION=true and instead use an .ebextension/fix_rails_6.config file containing

commands:
  02_download_nodejs:
    command: "curl --silent --location https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo bash -"
  03_install_nodejs:
    command: "yum -y install nodejs"

container_commands:
  19_precompile:
    command: "bundle exec rake assets:precompile"

(full file https://gist.github.com/lettergram/7384acdc3a157579a1692cc0af09d33a)

However, this results in an error Webpacker requires Node.js >= 8.16.0 and you are using 6.17.1...

How can I get the precompile to use the Node 8 that was already installed?

Answer 1

I got this working just now with the following (found here):

# .ebextensions/fix_rails_6.config

commands:

  00_remove_node_6_if_present:
    command: "/bin/rm -rf /var/cache/yum && /usr/bin/yum remove -y nodejs && /bin/rm /etc/yum.repos.d/nodesource* && /usr/bin/yum clean all && rm -rf /var/cache/yum"
    ignoreErrors: true
  01_download_nodejs:
    command: "curl --silent --location https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo bash -"
  02_install_nodejs:
    command: "yum -y install nodejs"
  03_install_yarn:
    command: "sudo wget https://dl.yarnpkg.com/rpm/yarn.repo -O /etc/yum.repos.d/yarn.repo && sudo yum install yarn -y"
  04_mkdir_webapp_dir:
    command: "mkdir /home/webapp"
    ignoreErrors: true
  05_chown_webapp_dir:
    command: "chown webapp:webapp /home/webapp"
    ignoreErrors: true
  06_chmod_webapp_dir:
    command: "chmod 0744 /home/webapp"
    ignoreErrors: true
  07_chmod_logs:
    command: "chown webapp:webapp -R /var/app/current/log/"
    ignoreErrors: true
  08_create_log_file:
    command: "touch /var/app/current/log/production.log"
    ignoreErrors: true
  09_chown_log_production:
    command: "chown webapp:webapp /var/app/current/log/production.log"
    ignoreErrors: true
  10_chmod_log_dir:
    command: "chmod 0664 -R /var/app/current/log/"
    ignoreErrors: true
  11_update_bundler:
    command: "gem update bundler"
    ignoreErrors: true
  12_chown_current:
    command: "chown webapp:webapp -R /var/app/current/"
    ignoreErrors: true
  13_chmod_current:
    command: "chmod 0755 -R /var/app/current/"
    ignoreErrors: true
  14_chown_current:
    command: "chown webapp:webapp -R /var/app/ondeck/"
    ignoreErrors: true
  15_chown_current:
    command: "chmod 0644 -R /var/app/ondeck/"
    ignoreErrors: true

container_commands:

  16_install_webpack:
    command: "npm install --save-dev webpack"
  17_precompile:
    command: "bundle exec rake assets:precompile"

I had to make a change to ensure node 6 was removed and node 12 installed instead adding && rm -rf /var/cache/yum to the end of the 00_remove_node_6_if_present command as it was still installing node 6 with the original.

However I encountered more grief with the NGINX proxy after this, which I fixed by changing the webpacker public_output_path to assets instead as I decided to use webpacker for everything rather than sprockets.