ljharb/ls-engines

Improper handling of OR ( || ) allows invalid result

Open

#32 opened on Jan 16, 2025

View on GitHubContributor guide
 (2 comments) (2 reactions) (0 assignees)JavaScript (4 forks)github user discovery
bughelp wanted

Repository metrics

Stars
 (57 stars)
PR merge metrics
 (No merged PRs in 30d)

Description

Hello,

I have a project for which I'm trying to use ls-engines to identify the minimum node version for and upon inspecting the requirements myself I ran into a notable edge case that I'm not sure about the choices for:

Upon inspection, the minimatch package had the most recent engine requirement, stating 20 || >= 22. Notably, this explicitly excludes node version 21. However, the result of ls-engines produces >= 20 as the result, which will erroneously accept version 21.

I believe the desired behavior should be to either inherit the same requirement as minimatch in this case, or just default to the highest of the specified values (>=22). Practically speaking wrt implementation, it may make sense to track which versions are excluded by dependencies to validate the output does not conflict.

Contributor guide

Research direction
Examine the engine parsing logic for OR (||) conditions, specifically how minimal versions are calculated. Trace to see why '20 || >=22' becomes '>=20' instead of respecting the exclusion of 21.
Tech stack
javascriptnodejs
Domain
backendcli
Issue type
Bug
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
2
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-3 hours
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
Gitnpm
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
75