How to fix "digital envelope routines::unsupported" error in Node

This article was published on Apr 24, 2023, and takes less than a minute to read.

Node 16 support will end on 11-Set-2023, but we all know how hard it's to have a large community and legacy projects up-to-date, so it's normal to have some compatibility issues.

After trying to run an old Vuepress (v1.9.9) site on Node 18, I got the following error:

node:internal/crypto/hash:71
  this[kHandle] = new _Hash(algorithm, xofLen);
                  ^

Error: error:0308010C:digital envelope routines::unsupported
    at new Hash (node:internal/crypto/hash:71:19)
    at Object.createHash (node:crypto:133:10)
    at module.exports (/Users/raulmelo/development/taco-api/node_modules/.pnpm/webpack@4.46.0/node_modules/webpack/lib/util/createHash.js:135:53)
    at NormalModule._initBuildHash (/Users/raulmelo/development/taco-api/node_modules/.pnpm/webpack@4.46.0/node_modules/webpack/lib/NormalModule.js:417:16)
    at handleParseError (/Users/raulmelo/development/taco-api/node_modules/.pnpm/webpack@4.46.0/node_modules/webpack/lib/NormalModule.js:471:10)
    at /Users/raulmelo/development/taco-api/node_modules/.pnpm/webpack@4.46.0/node_modules/webpack/lib/NormalModule.js:503:5
    at /Users/raulmelo/development/taco-api/node_modules/.pnpm/webpack@4.46.0/node_modules/webpack/lib/NormalModule.js:358:12
    at /Users/raulmelo/development/taco-api/node_modules/.pnpm/loader-runner@2.4.0/node_modules/loader-runner/lib/LoaderRunner.js:373:3
    at iterateNormalLoaders (/Users/raulmelo/development/taco-api/node_modules/.pnpm/loader-runner@2.4.0/node_modules/loader-runner/lib/LoaderRunner.js:214:10)
    at Array.<anonymous> (/Users/raulmelo/development/taco-api/node_modules/.pnpm/loader-runner@2.4.0/node_modules/loader-runner/lib/LoaderRunner.js:205:4)
    at Storage.finished (/Users/raulmelo/development/taco-api/node_modules/.pnpm/enhanced-resolve@4.5.0/node_modules/enhanced-resolve/lib/CachedInputFileSystem.js:55:16)
    at /Users/raulmelo/development/taco-api/node_modules/.pnpm/enhanced-resolve@4.5.0/node_modules/enhanced-resolve/lib/CachedInputFileSystem.js:91:9
    at /Users/raulmelo/development/taco-api/node_modules/.pnpm/graceful-fs@4.2.11/node_modules/graceful-fs/graceful-fs.js:123:16
    at FSReqCallback.readFileAfterClose [as oncomplete] (node:internal/fs/read_file_context:68:3) {
  opensslErrorStack: [ 'error:03000086:digital envelope routines::initialization error' ],
  library: 'digital envelope routines',
  reason: 'unsupported',
  code: 'ERR_OSSL_EVP_UNSUPPORTED'
}

Node.js v18.15.0

Vuepress in that version still uses Webpack, which has this compatibility problem.

So, as a workaround, instead of running:

vuepress dev documentation

... I have to run:

NODE_OPTIONS=--openssl-legacy-provider vuepress dev documentation

References