Cannot find module './version' - npm install on Azure DevOps fails - node.js

Question

I'm encountering a problem with the npm install step during my CI/CD build in Azure DevOps.
The specific package that is causing this problem appears to be node-sass. This package has given me a lot of trouble in the past as well but I did get it working and builds have been running fine for a while. Now for some reason they are failing again but I cannot seem to reproduce the problem on my machine and the error doesn't make any sense to me.
Here is the output from the failed build: https://pastebin.com/w4aK4dEh.
The error message is "Error: Cannot find module './version'"
I have tried to modify the step and changed it from a simple npm install to npm install --save-dev --unsafe-perm but it didn't seem to have any effect.
package.json
{
"version": "1.0.0",
"name": "myproject",
"private": true,
"devDependencies": {
"gulp": "4.0.2",
"gulp-concat": "2.6.1",
"gulp-cssmin": "0.2.0",
"gulp-rename": "2.0.0",
"gulp-sass": "4.1.0",
"gulp-uglify": "3.0.2",
"rimraf": "3.0.2",
"node-sass": "^4.8.3"
},
"dependencies": {}
}
I have also tried to remove node-sass from the dependencies entirely because I thought gulp-sass already includes it by default, but then I ran into "module node-sass not found" errors.
I'm really stumped on this one. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I am not entirely sure which of the following was the key to success but here's what I did to resolve this:
Delete the node_modules folder from my project, commit and then modify my .gitignore to exclude it from the repository permanently (yes, I know this one is a bit controversial as some people say the folder should be checked in)
Update the versions of the dependencies in the package.json file
Specify the specific version of NodeJs (and thus npm) to use. I did this by simply adding a step in the Azure build pipeline. Interestingly, the very latest version (15.2.1 at the time of writing this) did not work, however the LTS version 14.15.1 did work.
Some combination of those three changes did resolve the problem for me. I am leaving this information here in case someone else faces this same error message.