Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting ")") in esbuild

[valkoun]

We’ve been using a machine executor to run builds for our Angular v11.2.0 app. After updating to Angular v12.2.2, Angular now requires minimum Node version of 12.14.0. So, I updated our CircleCI config to use Node 12.14.0 (also tried 12.22.5 and 14.15.4), but now our builds error out in /home/circleci/repo/node_modules/esbuild/bin/esbuild which appears to be trying to process files that have bad syntax:

/home/circleci/repo/node_modules/esbuild/bin/esbuild: 1: /home/circleci/repo/node_modules/esbuild/bin/esbuild: �����H__PAGEZEROx__TEXT�t�t__text__TEXT�B�__symbol_stub1__TEXT: not found
/home/circleci/repo/node_modules/esbuild/bin/esbuild: 2: /home/circleci/repo/node_modules/esbuild/bin/esbuild: Cy�: not found
/home/circleci/repo/node_modules/esbuild/bin/esbuild: 3: /home/circleci/repo/node_modules/esbuild/bin/esbuild: Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting ")")

Here’s our config.yml:

# Javascript Node CircleCI 2.0 configuration file
#
# Check https://circleci.com/docs/2.0/language-javascript/ for more details
#
version: 2
jobs:
  build:
    # Using machine executor for more memory
    machine:
        # recommended linux image - includes Ubuntu 16.04, docker 18.09.3, docker-compose 1.23.1
        image: ubuntu-1604:201903-01

    working_directory: ~/repo

    steps:
      - checkout

      - run:
          # Using machine executor, we need to install needed Node version
          name: Installing Node 14.15.4
          # Load installed nvm env first, in each step
          command: |
            export NVM_DIR="/opt/circleci/.nvm"
            [ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"
            nvm install v14.15.4
            nvm alias default v14.15.4

      - run:
          name: Building for dev
          # Load installed nvm env first, in each step
          command: |
            export NVM_DIR="/opt/circleci/.nvm"
            [ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"
            npm run build -- --progress=false

      - run:
          name: Building for prod (AOT)
          # Load installed nvm env first, in each step
          command: |
            export NVM_DIR="/opt/circleci/.nvm"
            [ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"
            npm run build -- --configuration=production --progress=false

Any ideas?

Thank you!

[valkoun]

I don’t know why it was happening, but the errors were due to the CircleCI image using the checked out /node_modules/esbuild binary file, which in this case was generated on my MacOS (darwin-64 architecture). When the CircleCI image tries to execute it as linux-64 architecture, it throws the error. My solution was to add an npm rebuild esbuild command in the install Node step, to generate the esbuild binary on the CircleCI image.