Visual Studio Node Version

After working in dotnet core for quite a while now, I have switched my toolset a bit. The majority of my time is spent in Visual Studio Code, Powershell. Now I have been assigned to work on a project using the full blown .Net Framework. Ok, no big deal - I like those tools as well. It will be a little different web project setup but it will be serving an Angular cli project out of it so there is much fun to be had. The template we are using is from a third party, and they are using gulp tasks to handle the transpiling and management of the Angular Typescript. As I read and followed the steps in the documentation to get started, I got an error when running the dev task. This task calls a script in the package.json file that in turn runs ng build --watch. I ran this and got the following error:

[08:56:40] Starting 'ng-build'...
C:\src\~~myclient~~\node_modules\@angular\cli\models\config\config.js:17
    constructor(_configPath, schema, configJson, fallbacks = []) {
                                                           ^
SyntaxError: Unexpected token =

So I busted out the google fu and found this StackOverflow post getting-error-after-angular-cli-update. Reading the answer of “You need Node version 6.x or higher” made me think for a moment that this was not the same issue. I jumped into Powershell and node -v revealing v9.8.0 and maybe said Ha, don’t tell me I’m out of date! out loud.

I then got into the project folder in Powershell and ran the ng build --watch, and watched as the Angular project built just fine. It took me a second, but then I thought maybe the shell that Visual Studio uses is different from PowerShell. I wasn’t quite right, but again using the power of the internet searching for how to update the version of node used in Visual Studio, I found the following on StackOver about how to update-node-version-in-visual-studio-2017.

All that to say we need our $(PATH) variable above the $(DevEnvDir)\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\External in the Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > Web Package Management > External Web Tools locations of external tools list. This then allows control of your version of tools to be in sync with what you have on your path.

node visualstudio