Dependency installation fails on Node 10 / Update leveldown, levelup versions

[holgerd77]

Just tried to reinstall dependencies from within my local GitHub repository with npm install with Node v10.9.0, this is failing due to an error in the leveldown installation procedure.

I am not re-stating the error here, I think the issue is that we are in general using pretty outdated (in the library ^1.9.0, latest version v4.0.1) leveldown and levelup versions here and also in the ethereumjs-blockchain and merkle-patricia-tree libraries.

@vpulim: can you maybe take a look at this on a broader level? I already stumbled on this several times, but I am not really a leveldb expert and can't really judge how much changed throughout the major version updates and how this affects DB compatibility.

[vpulim]

@holgerd77 yes, we definitely need to update the levelup/down modules to more recent versions. I believe there was a breaking change in one of the recent versions, but I will take look and try to get the EthereumJS libraries updated.

[pzagor2]

Do we need to update levelup and memdown in the ethereumjs-blockchain library as well?

If that is something we need to do, I can take a look at it.

[vpulim]

@pzagor2 Yes, that would be great! Thanks. If its useful, here are the changes I made to the merkle-patricia-tree library: ethereumjs/merkle-patricia-tree#56

[aunyks]

Happy to see this getting some attention! This error during npm install is what kept me from contributing for a while 😅 .

[vpulim]

@aunyks Are you still seeing this error? I'm not able to reproduce it using node 10.4.0

[aunyks]

@vpulim I haven't seen it recently since I'm on v11.1.0. I was seeing it on ~v8, however.

[vpulim]

Ok thx @aunyks. The ethereumjs-blockchain and merkle-patricia-tree libraries have both been updated to use recent versions of level modules. I haven't been able to reproduce this with node version 8, 9, 10 or 11 so I'm going to close out this issue.

[holgerd77]

Just as a note: merkle-patricia-tree hasn't been released yet though with the level DB updates.