default project template doesn't work with Node v18

[lhk]

What is the current behaviour?

The default project doesn't work with Node v18.

Steps to Reproduce
I'm following the preactjs getting started guide:

npx preact-cli create default my-project
cd my-project
npm install # this is not necessary I think
npm run dev

This code doesn't run. It results in the error message:

Error: error:0308010C:digital envelope routines::unsupported
    at new Hash (node:internal/crypto/hash:71:19)
    at Object.createHash (node:crypto:133:10)

What is the expected behaviour?
It should be possible to use preactjs with an up-to-date version of Node, particularly when following the official tutorial.

Please mention any other relevant information
I think this issue is related: #1579

Please paste the results of npx preact-cli info here.

Environment Info:
  System:
    OS: Linux 6.0 Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS
    CPU: (12) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10850H CPU @ 2.70GHz
  Binaries:
    Node: 18.12.1 - /usr/bin/node
    npm: 8.12.1 - ~/.npm-global/bin/npm
  Browsers:
    Chrome: 106.0.5249.119
    Firefox: 107.0
  npmPackages:
    preact: ^10.11.3 => 10.11.3 
    preact-cli: ^3.4.2 => 3.4.4 
    preact-render-to-string: ^5.2.6 => 5.2.6 
    preact-router: ^3.2.1 => 3.2.1 

[rschristian]

Duplicate of #1643, #1748

Edit: This was a large break in the ecosystem on Node's side, but you can work around this by setting NODE_OPTIONS to use the legacy SSL provider, i.e.,:

{
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "NODE_OPTIONS=--openssl-legacy-provider preact watch"
  }
}

It should be possible to use preactjs with an up-to-date version of Node

preact and preact-cli are two separate entities. Preact itself has no issues here, this is strictly a problem with Preact-CLI.

While we're working on upgrading (as you can see in the issue you linked), it's a lot of work and I'm the only one contributing at the moment. Re:the official guide, we're still debating on what tools we'd like to point to. You might be happier with Vite, Astro, or Fresh.

[lhk]

Thanks for the quick reply and providing a solution.

Regarding the official guide, I think it's very important to have "getting started" instructions that work. By now I assume that most people are on Node v18.x and their first experience with preact will be that the default app template created in the official tutorial raises a strange configuration error. I'd expect that this really harms adoption.

Personally I have a slight preference for Vite. But that really doesn't matter as long as the code runs.

[rschristian]

Actually, 18 has very few (comparative) users; most people tend to only upgrade when necessary. I still see a fair number of 10 & 12 users on some projects I maintain.

But indeed, this isn't ideal. I'll try to think up a solution after work but it's a tad finicky as setting that env var can cause issues in a lot of systems, so we don't really want to do it ourselves.

As for the "Getting Started" instructions, I've tried. Can't do much more myself at this point.

Thanks for the feedback and bearing with me.

[rschristian]

Created #1774 for this.