Nodejs v16 update instructions (maybe faster but uses more RAM, supports ripemd160) #90
Description
Line 30 of package.json can be set to:
"@types/node": "16.11.7",
This line assumes we all update to nodejs v16. I've verified it works with 16.16.0, not just 16.11.7. Why v16? v17 no longer supports ripemd160 (by default), so v16 is the newest (& prob fastest) node which works straight away. I verified v18 won't work by default. The OpenSSL-3 issue is well-known.
Why update? Speed is critical for syncing new instances. If I have to wait another 5 weeks, a speed-up of just 3% is over a full day's work. SLPDB README could provide instructions to operators for a smooth update, or else maybe have a separate package.json for v16 versus v10 etc. The following terminal commands worked for me, resulting in npm (& npx) v8.11.0 & nodejs v16.16.0 in Debian.
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_16.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt install nodejs
sudo npm rebuild
npm install --force
Last line (or two) may be optional.
v16 feels slightly faster than v12 imo, but it does cause more RAM usage. I have a running sync journal on Reddit (here), where I've reported a RAM increase from 21 GiB to 29 GiB shortly after updating nodejs.