How to upgrade node js version on google cloud build

Ok, so after hours of Googling around it turns out Google cloud platform offers a registry of different npm cloud builders for use with Google cloud build.

I could have solved my issue by creating my own docker image but I wanted to avoid this in favour of the default cloud builders docker image. I changed my cloudbuild.yaml file to include the following builder 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/npm:node-10.10.0' instead of 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/npm' this then updated the node version to node 10.10.0 and just like magic Angular 8 can now be built by google cloud build!

Specific node versions from the cloud builders repository can be found here: https://console.cloud.google.com/gcr/images/cloud-builders/GLOBAL/npm

As suggested by their documentation you should instead using an official node image and specifying the npm entrypoint:

steps:
- name: node:10.15.1
  entrypoint: npm
  args: ['install']

https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/cloud-builders/blob/master/npm/README.md