ASP.NET Core Angular template in Visual Studio 2017 fails to build with "SyntaxError: Unexpected token"

Question

A new project created using the Angular ASP.NET Core Web Application template in Visual Studio 2017 (Enterprise) does not build. So far I have reproduced this on two machines. The build output is shown below:

1>Performing first-run Webpack build...
1>C:\git\zoeri\zoeri-azure-graphs\samples\Zoeri.Azure.Graphs.Sample.Web\node_modules\webpack\bin\webpack.js:186
1>      outputOptions.children = options.map(o => o.stats);
1>                                             ^^
1>SyntaxError: Unexpected token =>
1>    at exports.runInThisContext (vm.js:73:16)
1>    at Module._compile (module.js:443:25)
1>    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:478:10)
1>    at Module.load (module.js:355:32)
1>    at Function.Module._load (module.js:310:12)
1>    at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:501:10)
1>    at startup (node.js:129:16)
1>    at node.js:814:3
1>C:\git\zoeri\zoeri-azure-graphs\samples\Zoeri.Azure.Graphs.Sample.Web\Zoeri.Azure.Graphs.Sample.Web.csproj(33,5): error MSB3073: The command "node node_modules/webpack/bin/webpack.js --config webpack.config.vendor.js" exited with code 1.
1>Done building project "Zoeri.Azure.Graphs.Sample.Web.csproj" -- FAILED.
========== Build: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========

Looking forward to any help!

Answer 1

The issue is with the ECMASCRIPT version, basically JS version. Try using the latest nodejs or node above 4.5 (need to use 'use strict'; option)

==> is new syntax used in ES6