Joplin: Due to issues with the build due to canvas, we can't build 3.1.24

[sahal]

• See Build Error: Incompatibility of canvas@2.11.2 with Node.js v22.11.0 Automattic/node-canvas#2448 and
• an issue i created in Joplin's repo: build fails for canvas@2.11.2 with nodejs@v23 on Linux laurent22/joplin#11393

Created this to maybe find a work around.

[minoplhy]

Replace nodejs depends with nodejs<=18.20.5 or nodejs-lts-hydrogen make the build passing. This might be a temporary workaround for those who want to build joplin rn.

[sahal]

That's a great idea! I asked upstream to see if they'd put a max version in the package.json esp if they're not actively testing builds with more than one version. 🤷🏾 I'm not a js dev, so maybe that's not standard procedure.

To update this, I've extensively testing building (installing deps) canvas and Joplin in docker https://gist.github.com/sahal/ec57d2e63764e7b125fca54267977bdc using the node-slim images from dockerhub. I've put verbose logs in both of the linked Github issues. To summarize:

• Canvas builds on all node versions(18-23) when built on its own. but
• Joplin fails when building canvas only in node 23.

Again, not sure what's the correct procedure for troubleshooting js dev environments.

[minoplhy]

Js is not really my fasion either 😓. But yeah, i think, for the time being, there need to be a version lock on dependencies, atleast for this Arch package.

[kmanwar89]

joplin-desktop_install_fail_arch_13dec2024.txt

Just sharing that this issue still exists, and I didn't see anything in the AUR that instructs of an actual workaround (or fix?) from the maintainer.

I've attached the entire log of my install that demonstrates the errors seen, would really appreciate if this can be permanently addressed, thanks!

[sahal]

This is an issue with Joplin, for which the developers have not responded (see linked issue). Its related to building the canvas and nan packages in node. They do not build in version 23. A patch for nan has been submitted, but it hasn't been reviewed, merged, or released.

The official package does build because the developers use an older version of node.

1. We could possibly patch nan ourselves to match the patch submitted by a nan developer -- but I'm not sure how to do that in JS.
2. We could use an older version of node, but when I tried that, it failed too. The failure wasn't because of canvas, but due to joplin lib not building.

[sahal]

Still haven't heard back from Joplin. The github bot marked the issue as stale. I did fork the repo and run their own github action that shows the failure though. This is not unique to arch.