Node.js

You are right, the nodejs runtime in the snap packages is quite outdated even when using core18 as base via base: core18 in the snapcraft.yaml. The solution is not using the snapcraft nodejs plugin but to download the provided binaries directly from the nodejs distributions archive: https://nodejs.org/dist/.

This can be made very conveniently via snapcrafts dump plugin which supports downloading and extracting archives (even the efficient xy compression) with only one line of code: To get the newest nodejs version of 12.18.x for 64 bit (AMD) linux this parts definition gets it into the snap:

parts:
  node:
    plugin: dump
    source: https://nodejs.org/dist/v12.18.4/node-v12.18.4-linux-x64.tar.xz

Nodejs will than be available in the snaps bin directory. The command for starting a javascript app can than look like:

command: bin/node $SNAP/app/index.js

As of today, you can simply install it with:

sudo apt-get install nodejs

Node is one of the easier projects to build. Just change the version as that continues to change.

Browse to http://nodejs.org/dist/latest/ to find out the latest package version.

cd /usr/local/src
wget http://nodejs.org/dist/latest/node-v7.2.1.tar.gz
tar -xvzf node-v7.2.1.tar.gz
cd node-v7.2.1
./configure
make
sudo make install
which node

You should see /usr/local/bin/node.