nodeSetup: Couldn't follow symbolic link.

[thSoft]

Hi,

Sometimes the nodeSetup task is failing with the error
'Couldn't follow symbolic link.' on osx.

Cleaning the .gradle directory fixes the issue.

> Task :myproject:nodeSetup FAILED

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':magicdraw-oslc-delegated-dialog:nodeSetup'.
> Couldn't follow symbolic link '/Users/thsoft/myproject/.gradle/nodejs/node-v20.11.1-darwin-x64/bin/npx'.

(This is exactly the same problem as srs/gradle-node-plugin#190.)

Unfortunately I can't share my example and I can't reproduce this from a clean state, but I'll try to come up with a minimal example.

[deepy]

What version of the plugin are you using?
And when it fails, what does /Users/thsoft/myproject/.gradle/nodejs/node-v20.11.1-darwin-x64/bin/npx point to?

[thSoft]

Thanks for reaching out!

Version:

plugins {
    id("com.github.node-gradle.node") version "7.0.2"
}

Symlink target:

/Users/thsoft/myproject/.gradle/nodejs/node-v20.11.1-darwin-x64/bin/npx -> /Users/thsoft/myproject/.gradle/nodejs/node-v20.11.1-darwin-x64/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npx-cli.js

[DreierF]

We are facing the same issue:

> Task :pnpmSetup FAILED

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':pnpmSetup'.
> A problem occurred starting process 'command 'npm''

Environment (in case it makes a difference):

• macOS 15
• Gradle 8.10.2 running on Java 21
• nodejs is installed via homebrew
  • /opt/homebrew/bin is on the PATH
  • /opt/homebrew/bin/npm is a symlink to /opt/homebrew/Cellar/node/22.9.0/bin/npm
  • /opt/homebrew/Cellar/node/22.9.0/bin/npm is a symlink to /opt/homebrew/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js

This task produces the same error:

tasks.register<Exec>("npmVersion") {
    environment = mapOf(Pair("PATH", "/opt/homebrew/bin"))
    commandLine = listOf("npm", "--version")
}

[deepy]

I think you're hitting this Java 21 issue: gradle/gradle#10483 (comment)
And this is probably something that only should be fixed in Gradle, but since it's Java 21 we might need to work around it in the plugin 🥲

For the download = false scenario relying on path should be absolutely fine, either your system knows where the thing is or you need to tell it
But in the case of download = true we know where the binary should be, and relying on PATH just means we might be picking up the wrong thing

[xtermi2]

same issue here since version 7.0.2 (also on 7.1.0) - on Java 21 AND 17!
We use download = true

[candrews]

Would disabling the gradle daemon workaround this issue?

https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/gradle_daemon.html#disable_for_a_build

I'd be curious to learn from others if that avoids this problem.

[deepy]

Not that I know of, and unless Gradle can work around this issue the only thing we can do is stop using PATH for download = true scenarios
Doing that makes perfect sense though, so if anyone is interested in looking into it I can do my best to help PRs

But I think this issue might be incidentally solved in #328 (though I've been unable to find the time to properly review it)