Allow using external Node when running tasks / plugins

[bahmutov]

Proposal

Currently, the plugins file is executed using the Node.js version included with Cypress Test Runner (like 8.2.1), which is often not the version needed to run the application. The most common problem is the inability to load native extensions when requiring NPM modules from the plugins file. The installed app for example uses Node 10 to compile extensions, while Cypress tries to load them using Node 8

So instead of using built-in Node version in packages/server/lib/plugins/index.coffee

pluginsProcess = cp.fork(path.join(__dirname, "child", "index.js"),
   ["--file", config.pluginsFile], { stdio: "inherit" })

we could find external Node and launch it as a child process

reported issues

• cannot connect to Oracle DB While loading Oracle db within Cypress (plugins/index.js), getting error - NJS-045: cannot load the oracledb add-on binary for Node.js 8.2.1 (win32, x64) #2914
• cannot load node-sass Cypress error : Node Sass could not find a binding for your current environment: Windows 64-bit with Node.js 8.x #3875 and unable to require node-sass within plugins - can not test svelte file with sass syntax in the style tag #4202

[bahmutov]

Finding Node

Project https://github.com/typicode/husky uses to find https://github.com/sindresorhus/run-node

I think it would be nice to configure what Node to use from cypress.json, something like

{
  "node": "built-in"
}

to use Node that comes with the Test Runner. To use specific version of Node (think NVM managing multiple versions)

{
  "node": "10.2.1"
}

or specify minimum version

{
  "node": "12"
}

[cypress-bot]

The code for this is done in cypress-io/cypress#4436, but has yet to be released.
We'll update this issue and reference the changelog when it's released.

[cypress-bot]

Released in 3.5.0.