Errors when cloning then installing dependencies

[mitya33]

→ Step 1: Describe the issue 📝

I followed the steps to set up ML5 locally and got errors when running npm install - see screenshot. I then tried to run npm run develop despite the error, and got another error.

→ Step 2: Screenshots or Relevant Documentation 🖼

→ Describe your setup 🦄

Here's some helpful information about my setup...

• Web browser & version: n/a
• Operating System: Windows 10
• ml5 version you're using: The latest, presumably, as I just cloned the repo
• Any additional notes

[bravokiloecho]

I'm having the same issue with Mac OS, node v18.3.0 & nm v8.11.0

[sproutleaf]

Hi @mitya33 and @bravokiloecho,

The issue happens because one of the authors of a package we're using (ev1stensberg in the above screenshot) has changed their username on GitHub, so the .git link no longer works.

In general, ml5.js is having a lot of outdated dependencies now. We're working on a new version of the library that's set to be released by the end of the summer. I have opened a new issue in the new repo. Please check over there for progress.

Thank you!
Miaoye

[lindapaiste]

@sproutleaf I suspect this can be fixed with a minor change to this current repo. In this comment @colormotor tracked down that the bad ev1stensberg dependency is coming from webpack-cli. We have two open dependabot PRs which would update that package (#1445 and #1453). I suspect those are pretty safe to merge? Not sure, but this is just dealing with devDependencies.

[sproutleaf]

@lindapaiste Dan, Peter (who's also an NYU student working on the technical side of things), and I actually did a work session together where we tried to investigate which dependencies need to be updated, and change them accordingly. We hit a point where we realized that to update webpack-cli to the latest version, we also have to use a version of node that's >= v12.13.0. If we do that, the majority of the dependencies will not be compatible, and updating many of them might introduce errors to our library if we're not careful.

Since we have limited bandwidth and releasing v1.0 soon on the horizon, we decided to focus on building a new version of the library in the new repo, instead of updating dependencies here for now!