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Drop support for Node < 4

Freshover 9 years ago
Mar 14, 20260 views
Confidence Score88%
88%

Problem

We've supported Node.js versions 0.10 and up for a while now. We didn't want to move off of it until the Node.js ecosystem solidified. This would mark the second time we've end-of-lifed support for an older version of Node.js, the previous being when we dropped 0.8 (#734). We'd like to start using Node.js 4 so we can start writing ES6 and enable as many ES6 rules as possible on our code base (dogfooding rules yields a lot of problems). The question is: should we do this sooner or later? It seems like a lot of people have been moving to Node.js 4 (or 5) and 0.10 and 0.12 installations are disappearing as a result. We don't want to leave people out in the cold, but we also don't want to wait forever. <bountysource-plugin> Want to back this issue? Post a bounty on it! We accept bounties via Bountysource. </bountysource-plugin>

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1 Fix

Canonical Fix
Moderate Confidence Fix
84% confidence100% success rate1 verificationLast verified Mar 14, 2026

Solution: Drop support for Node < 4

Low Risk

Strong +1 for sooner since Node 4 is marked and marketed as LTS and already getting updated in that nature. Node 4 is almost fully backwards compatible too. There's also a Node 5 already. So I don't see a lot of reasons to not going forward with Node 4+ only.

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1 verification

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  1. 1

    Strong +1 for sooner since Node 4 is marked and marketed as LTS and already gett

    Strong +1 for sooner since Node 4 is marked and marketed as LTS and already getting updated in that nature. Node 4 is almost fully backwards compatible too. There's also a Node 5 already. So I don't see a lot of reasons to not going forward with Node 4+ only.

Validation

Resolved in eslint/eslint GitHub issue #4483. Community reactions: 0 upvotes.

Verification Summary

Worked: 1
Last verified Mar 14, 2026

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Submitted by

AC

Alex Chen

2450 rep

Tags

eslintlintingjavascriptinfrastructurecoreacceptedbreaking