I recently came across the following erring during a HelloWorld build process – this was preventing my build from being able to ship.

PS C:\REpo\SPFest2019-1> gulp bundle –ship
Build target: SHIP
[17:27:17] Using gulpfile C:\REpo\SPFest2019-1\gulpfile.js
[17:27:17] Starting gulp
[17:27:17] Starting ‘bundle’…
[17:27:17] Starting subtask ‘configure-sp-build-rig’…
[17:27:17] Finished subtask ‘configure-sp-build-rig’ after 80 ms
[17:27:17] Starting subtask ‘pre-copy’…
[17:27:18] Finished subtask ‘pre-copy’ after 98 ms
[17:27:18] Starting subtask ‘copy-static-assets’…
[17:27:18] Starting subtask ‘sass’…
[17:27:18] Finished subtask ‘copy-static-assets’ after 203 ms
Browserslist: caniuse-lite is outdated. Please run next command `npm update`
[17:27:18] Finished subtask ‘sass’ after 416 ms
[17:27:18] Starting subtask ‘tslint’…
[17:27:19] [tslint] tslint version: 5.12.1
[17:27:19] Starting subtask ‘tsc’…
[17:27:19] [tsc] typescript version: 2.9.2
[17:27:24] Finished subtask ‘tsc’ after 4.54 s
[17:27:24] Finished subtask ‘tslint’ after 6.5 s
[17:27:24] Starting subtask ‘post-copy’…
[17:27:24] Finished subtask ‘post-copy’ after 318 μs
[17:27:24] Starting subtask ‘collectLocalizedResources’…
[17:27:24] Finished subtask ‘collectLocalizedResources’ after 5.15 ms
[17:27:25] Starting subtask ‘configure-webpack’…
[17:27:26] Finished subtask ‘configure-webpack’ after 1.43 s
[17:27:30] Finished subtask ‘webpack’ after 3.78 s
[17:27:30] Starting subtask ‘configure-webpack-external-bundling’…
[17:27:30] Finished subtask ‘configure-webpack-external-bundling’ after 998 μs
[17:27:30] Finished subtask ‘copy-assets’ after 50 ms
[17:27:30] Starting subtask ‘write-manifests’…
[17:27:31] Finished subtask ‘write-manifests’ after 1.51 s
[17:27:31] Finished ‘bundle’ after 14 s
[17:27:32] ==================[ Finished ]==================
[17:27:32] Project sp-fest-2019-1 version:0.0.1
[17:27:32] Build tools version:3.9.26
[17:27:32] Node version:v8.11.4
[17:27:32] Total duration:19 s
The build failed because a task wrote output to stderr.

Solution

The solution is not immediately obvious – because the use of the caniuse-lite browserslist is not part of my package.json. It is buried somewhere deep inside of the SPFx code provided by Yeoman.

The solution sof npm update did not work.

After a little googleing the following solved the issue – and taught me about npm update 🙂

npm update –depth 10 caniuse-lite browserslist

PS C:\REpo\SPFest2019-1> npm update –depth 10 caniuse-lite browserslist
npm WARN @uifabric/utilities@6.45.1 requires a peer of @types/react-dom@>=16.3.0 <17.0.0 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN ajv-keywords@3.4.0 requires a peer of ajv@^6.9.1 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN optional SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: fsevents@1.2.9 (node_modules\fsevents):
npm WARN notsup SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: Unsupported platform for fsevents@1.2.9: wanted {“os”:”darwin”,”arch”:”any”} (current: {“os”:”win32″,”arch”:”x64″})

+ browserslist@4.8.2
+ caniuse-lite@1.0.30001015
added 2 packages and updated 3 packages in 29.744s

and that solved the issue.