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Revert the change of network interfaces family from String to Integer #43014
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[-]Revert the change of network interfaces family from Striung to Integer[/-][+]Revert the change of network interfaces family from String to Integer[/+]on May 9, 2022 Seeing a lot a pain coming out of this breaking change.
cc @nodejs/tsc I think I'd lean towards reverting #41431, even though reverting the change would itself be breaking. Or at least restoring the family attribute on network interface objects to a string.
Reacted by Ingo Fischer and Darshan SenAgree, this change has been more disruptive than I think we'd have liked. I'd be +1 on a revert.
I have seen that some of the ecosystem has already spent time investigating and adjusting to this change. Would a full revert cause additional disruption at this point? I'm curious if there's a way to adequately mitigate the impact of the change without causing further disruption. Would the suggestions in #41431 (comment) be sufficient?
I assume (at least from the changes I have "seen" and because of needed nodejs backward compatibility) most simply added it as alternative to support both variants ... So a revert should (!) for most just lead to a "dead code OR clause"
Reacted by Beth Griggs and Tobias NießenInthe TSC meeting (at least as I understand the minutes) it was decided to revert the "integrater family back to Strings" ... should be in Node.js 18.2. Thank you very much for this!
Reacted by Jan Romann and yeliex7 remaining items
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on Dec 6, 2025
Version
18.x
Platform
any
Subsystem
dns?
What steps will reproduce the bug?
see #41431 (review)
How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?
always
What is the expected behavior?
The family is backward compatible a string and not an integer thatbreaks many modules
What do you see instead?
family is an integer breaking many libraries
Additional information
Please see the comments in the linked PR and consider a "fix" fo this breaking change