future: support Node 18

[paul-marechal]

While dropping support for Node 12 in #11210 I tried adding testing for Node 18 but failed.

It seems like there's a couple breakages in Node 18 that we will need to adapt to once we decide to support it:

• It needs Ubuntu >= 20.04 to run because it uses a newer version of glibc.
• net.Server.listen(port, address, ...) now defaults to an IPv6 localhost address when unspecified.
• The macaddress npm package used by plugin-ext breaks on Node 18.
• We need to update the macaddress package for it to work on Node 18.
• More?

[Alexander-Taran]

pull request to fix macaddress package
scravy/node-macaddress#40

[Alexander-Taran]

Fixed macaddress is published version to npmjs

[anavarre]

Any update on Node.js 18 support? It's been a year since this issue was raised and with the upcoming EOL of Node.js 16 in September I'd like to make sure that we have a secure option then. Thanks!

[shriacquia]

Any update on Node.js 18 support?

[paul-marechal]

Gave it a quick try and it seems trivial to bump to node 18.x so I opened a PR for it.

Please try the PR and tell us if you find any regressions that weren't caught by our CI.

[vince-fugnitto]

Please note that we generally want to follow the same runtime present in VS Code for compatibility with extensions.
They declare that versions higher than 17 have not yet been tested, and still use 16 during CI:

• https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/406618d71adb41af931ca787e178b797a475eb6c/build/npm/preinstall.js#L12-L18
• https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/406618d71adb41af931ca787e178b797a475eb6c/.github/workflows/ci.yml#L26-L28

[paul-marechal]

We use Electron 23 which embarks Node 18 already.

[danepowell]

Since this seems to be blocked on vscode, note that vscode will move to Node 18 as part of Electron 25: microsoft/vscode#184021

[paul-marechal]

I don't think (theia) moving to node 18 is "blocked on VS Code" as our current version of Electron runs node 18.

edit: Unless you meant that the move is blocked on the VS Code side, not ours, if so my bad.

There is a PR opened that needs reviewing before moving forward.