Adopt Node@18 as the minimum supported version

[UlisesGascon]

As discussed in expressjs/discussions#224 and expressjs/discussions#196.

Here is a proposal to set Node@18 as the minimum version supported by Express v5.x

Main Changes

• Set Node 18 as the minimum version in the package.json (4b3b8cc)
• Remove from the CI any Node.js version prior to 18 (e9bcdd3)

Changelog

• e9bcdd3 ci: adopt Node@18 as the minimum supported version by @UlisesGascon
• 4b3b8cc feat: adopt Node@18 as the minimum supported version by @UlisesGascon

[wesleytodd]

I had been thinking about this last night after our meeting and I was thinking that we should get all the dependencies working as we expect first and then do this specific change last. Maybe I am over thinking it, but I really do think it will be valuable to point specifically to the commits we landed which "broke" each node.js version. If we stop testing and do this early we loose that signal and it might be hard to untangle after the fact.

[UlisesGascon]

I had been thinking about this last night after our meeting and I was thinking that we should get all the dependencies working as we expect first and then do this specific change last.

AFAIK, there is no rush to merge this PR. It can be the last one before we officially release v5. Let's keep it open for a while and see how do we feel about it in few more commits 👍

[wesleytodd]

We can remove them in an ad-hoc way. That is sort of why I am not sure this specific PR would be what we even land, but I don't see any reason not to keep it open for now until we are sure.

[crandmck]

So I think maybe the docs have gotten a bit ahead of ourselves here as we say 5.x requires Node 18+ ...
https://expressjs.com/en/5x/api.html

IIUC I think we do SUPPORT v18+ but technically we require a lower version. I probably changed this wording because I thought this was decided, my bad.

Probably not a huge deal since anyone who's using 5 has sorted this out... but if this isn't going to land soon, then should we say something different to be accurate?

[UlisesGascon]

@crandmck you are right, the decision was made already (so in terms of documentation we are fine saying Node@18). This PR has moved to draft as we probably will merge it as the last one before releasing Express@5 ref

[RobinTail]

we probably will merge it as the last one before releasing Express@5 ref

I recommend to do it now, @UlisesGascon .
This PR should be treated as a foundation of 5.x, because it enables using modern syntax, latest dependencies and to remove various compatibility crutches in all other PRs.

[ctcpip]

reopened. I think some wires got crossed here

[ctcpip]

we wanted these changes in the master->5.0 merge branch/PR, so we pulled them in. therefore, merging that PR will resolve this one.

edit: converting this to draft so we don't accidentally merge it, but all the commits here have been pulled into the merge branch

[RobinTail]

This PR is needed to remove the redundant pipelines that are still running and failing in the 5.0 branch against the unsupported engines.

express/.github/workflows/ci.yml

Line 13 in 9c756b0

node-version: [18, 19, 20, 21, 22]

Without it you will keep having a yearly supply of red crosses in every PR targeting 5.0: