A newer version of the CDK CLI (>= 1.21.0) is necessary to interact with this app

[iliapolo]

Initializing an app using cdk 1.21.0 and trying to synth it results in an error.

A newer version of the CDK CLI (>= 1.21.0) is necessary to interact with this app

Workaround

A workaround is to install 1.22.0 (or latest) version of the CLI.

npm install -g [email protected]

see #5986 (comment)

Reproduction Steps

npm install -g [email protected]
cdk init --language typescript
cdk synth

Error Log

A newer version of the CDK CLI (>= 1.21.0) is necessary to interact with this app

Environment

• CLI Version : 1.21.0
• Framework Version: NA
• OS : MacOS
• Language : Typescript

Other

❯ cdk --version                                                                                                                                                       [23:07:16]
1.21.0 (build bf6ab14)

---

This is 🐛 Bug Report

[iliapolo]

Actually, this will happen in all versions except for the latest (1.22.0 at the time of writing). This is because we still use a caret dependency for @aws-cdk/core in our templates. Combine this with a protocol change that version 1.22.0 introduced, and we get this error.

[iliapolo]

The error message itself is misleading, and is actually a bug in and of itself. It instructs the user to install >= 1.21.0, which is what is installed (1.21.0)

Installing version 1.22.0 (or simply latest) of aws-cdk will resolve this problem.

[w601sxs]

Doing npm install -g [email protected] as suggested

gives ..

npm WARN deprecated [email protected]: request has been deprecated, see https://github.com/request/request/issues/3142
npm ERR! code EEXIST
npm ERR! syscall symlink
npm ERR! path ../lib/node_modules/aws-cdk/bin/cdk
npm ERR! dest /home/ubuntu/.nvm/versions/node/v10.18.0/bin/cdk
npm ERR! errno -17
npm ERR! EEXIST: file already exists, symlink '../lib/node_modules/aws-cdk/bin/cdk' -> '/home/ubuntu/.nvm/versions/node/v10.18.0/bin/cdk'
npm ERR! File exists: /home/ubuntu/.nvm/versions/node/v10.18.0/bin/cdk
npm ERR! Remove the existing file and try again, or run npm
npm ERR! with --force to overwrite files recklessly.
npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /home/ubuntu/.npm/_logs/2020-02-18T14_34_29_253Z-debug.log

Doing npm install -g --force [email protected] as suggested in the error message, and then doing cdk --version gives 1.22 [succeeds]

npm WARN using --force I sure hope you know what you are doing.
npm WARN deprecated [email protected]: request has been deprecated, see https://github.com/request/request/issues/3142
/home/ubuntu/.nvm/versions/node/v10.18.0/bin/cdk -> /home/ubuntu/.nvm/versions/node/v10.18.0/lib/node_modules/aws-cdk/bin/cdk

[email protected] postinstall /home/ubuntu/.nvm/versions/node/v10.18.0/lib/node_modules/aws-cdk/node_modules/core-js-pure

node -e "try{require('./postinstall')}catch(e){}"

Thank you for using core-js ( https://github.com/zloirock/core-js ) for polyfilling JavaScript standard library!

The project needs your help! Please consider supporting of core-js on Open Collective or Patreon: 
https://opencollective.com/core-js 
https://www.patreon.com/zloirock 

Also, the author of core-js ( https://github.com/zloirock ) is looking for a good job -)```