Installing dependencies takes much longer during builds

[sttic]

Installing dependencies takes much longer during builds.

See https://github.com/cusec/2021/runs/1366985806?check_suite_focus=true versus https://github.com/cusec/2021/runs/1344483283?check_suite_focus=true on Install Dependencies step (3m 35s and 20s respectively).

The extra time seems to be from falling back to source compile due to grpc pre-built binaries not being found.

> grpc@1.24.2 install /home/runner/work/2021/2021/node_modules/grpc
> node-pre-gyp install --fallback-to-build --library=static_library

node-pre-gyp WARN Using request for node-pre-gyp https download 
node-pre-gyp WARN Tried to download(404): https://node-precompiled-binaries.grpc.io/grpc/v1.24.2/node-v83-linux-x64-glibc.tar.gz 
node-pre-gyp WARN Pre-built binaries not found for grpc@1.24.2 and node@14.15.0 (node-v83 ABI, glibc) (falling back to source compile with node-gyp) 
make: Entering directory '/home/runner/work/2021/2021/node_modules/grpc/build'

Potential solutions:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52164351/pre-built-binaries-not-found-for-grpc1-10-1-and-node10-9-0
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51107020/error-during-npm-i-node-pre-gyp-install-fallback-to-build-library-static-l

[sttic]

Currently our builds uses the Ubuntu 18.04 environment provided with GitHub actions, which recently switched the default version of Node.JS to 14.x from 12.x. See:

• https://github.com/actions/virtual-environments
• https://github.com/actions/virtual-environments/blob/main/images/linux/Ubuntu1804-README.md
• Default Node.JS will be switched to 14.x on all platforms  actions/runner-images#1953 (this recommends using the setup-node action to switch back to Node 12)

The version switch caused these compatibility issues with @grpc/grpc-js (which recommends using Node 12). This explains why the CI suddenly started taking longer during npm ci dependency installation on the grpc step.

• https://github.com/grpc/grpc-node/tree/master/packages/grpc-js

From my testing on my machine, Node 14 is where the issues start with the dependency.