Firebase Emulator Suite UI unable to start

[rosera]

Note: Before filing bugs in this repo, please ensure that this is a bug for the Emulator Suite UI. Emulator Suite and/or Firebase CLI bugs should be filed under the firebase-tools repo here:
https://github.com/firebase/firebase-tools/issues/new/choose

Describe the bug
A clear and concise description of what the bug is.

This issue on stackflow covers the error I am seeing when acccessing the Emulator UI
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75840698/i-cannot-run-firebase-emulators-on-fresh-install-getting-syntaxerror-unexpec

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

I am using a fresh install of Firebase tools on Mac.

firebase --version

11.25.1

MacOS

13.2.1 (22D68)

firebase emulators:start results in a UI error logged

/Users/r/.cache/firebase/emulators/ui-v1.11.4/server/server.js:569
        re"use strict";
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^

SyntaxError: Unexpected string
    at internalCompileFunction (node:internal/vm:73:18)
    at wrapSafe (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1195:20)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1239:27)
    at Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1329:10)
    at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1133:32)
    at Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:972:12)
    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (node:internal/modules/run_main:83:12)
    at node:internal/main/run_main_module:23:47

Node.js v19.8.1

Expected behavior
Should be able to start the Firebase Emulator suite UI

Screenshots
N/A

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: MacOS 13.2.1
• Browser: ChromeOS
• Version: 111.0.5563.110

Smartphone (please complete the following information):

N/A

Additional context
New Flutter project added Authentication and Cloud Firestore emulator components.
npm: 9.5.1
node: 19.8.1
openjdk version "11.0.18" 2023-01-17
OpenJDK Runtime Environment Homebrew (build 11.0.18+0)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Homebrew (build 11.0.18+0, mixed mode)

[rosera]

I downgraded my node to LTS v16.19.1 and flushed the cache. That did the trick - I can now start the emulator on my device.

brew install node@16

flush the cache

rm -rf ~/.cache/firebase

[pich4ya]

Copy & Paste Solution:

brew install node@16
export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/node@16/bin:$PATH"
rm -rf ~/.cache/firebase
npm install -g firebase-tools
firebase emulators:start

[christhompsongoogle]

We have some additional reports of this happening, though I'm not able to reproduce it. If anyone has additional details to share please comment on this issue.

For example some questions to help us narrow this down: does this happen with a fresh install? Is it only with Node 19?

[joehan]

Had another customer report that they encountered this on both node 18 and node 19 - unable to repro it myself though.

[rosera]

In my case I had a fresh install on a MacOS and Linux hosts (relevant tech stack in the original post).

I didnt need to reinstall the tooling e.g. npm i -g firebase-tools. Downgrading the node version and removing the local cache did the trick for my situation.

Using the following Dockerfile I am able to replicate the original error message:

FROM debian:stable-slim

# Install updates
RUN apt-get update && apt-get -y upgrade
RUN apt-get install -y curl gcc g++ make default-jre
RUN curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_19.x | bash -
RUN apt-get install -y nodejs

RUN npm install -g firebase-tools
RUN useradd -ms /bin/bash firebase-dev

USER firebase-dev
WORKDIR /home/firebase-dev

Build the image

docker build -t firebase-dev .

Run the container interactively with access to the host network

docker run -it --net=host firebase-dev /bin/bash

Then

• firebase login
• firebase init
• Add Authentication Emulator and use default port values
• firebase emulators:start

At this point the following error message is shown:

firebase-dev@penguin:~$ firebase emulators:start
i  emulators: Starting emulators: auth
i  ui: downloading ui-v1.11.4.zip...
Progress: ========================================================================================================================================================================================================================> (100% of 4MB)
i  ui: Emulator UI logging to ui-debug.log
⚠  ui: Fatal error occurred: 
   Emulator UI has exited with code: 1, 
   stopping all running emulators
i  ui: Stopping Emulator UI
⚠  ui: Error stopping Emulator UI
i  auth: Stopping Authentication Emulator
i  hub: Stopping emulator hub
i  logging: Stopping Logging Emulator
firebase-dev@penguin:~$ cat ui-debug.log
/home/firebase-dev/.cache/firebase/emulators/ui-v1.11.4/server/server.js:569
        re"use strict";
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^

SyntaxError: Unexpected string
    at internalCompileFunction (node:internal/vm:73:18)
    at wrapSafe (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1195:20)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1239:27)
    at Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1329:10)
    at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1133:32)
    at Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:972:12)
    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (node:internal/modules/run_main:83:12)
    at node:internal/main/run_main_module:23:47

Node.js v19.8.1

[Miamoto-Musashi]

having same issue on mac

/Users/mac/.cache/firebase/emulators/ui-v1.11.4/server/server.js:569
        re"use strict";
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^

SyntaxError: Unexpected string
    at internalCompileFunction (node:internal/vm:73:18)
    at wrapSafe (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1195:20)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1239:27)
    at Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1329:10)
    at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1133:32)
    at Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:972:12)
    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (node:internal/modules/run_main:83:12)
    at node:internal/main/run_main_module:23:47

Node.js v19.8.1

[christhompsongoogle]

Downgrading to Node 18 and clearing the cache as decribed above (copied here for signal boost) seems to resolve the issue. Node 19 is an experimental release. I'm still not clear why the cache clear is required though. There's a new release of the UI coming out this week that may resolve it.

nvm install --lts
rm -rf ~/.cache/firebase
npm install -g firebase-tools
firebase emulators:start

[Zaffer]

Faced this issue using Node 19, downgrading to 18 worked for me.