Path fix for node-js on Ubuntu (or Debian in general?)

[benjaoming]

Summary

This was previously attempted in #1688 but I found a Node 6 upgrade fixed the issue back then.

However, now on Ubuntu 18.04, I find the issue occurring with the current official Debian pkg for Node.

@rtibbles does this work on your system as well?

If this get's merged, I'm fine that it get's quickly reverted if fellow devs report issues with it.

Reviewer guidance

@rtibbles we've been here before...

References

#1688

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Contributor Checklist

• Contributor has fully tested the PR manually (on MY SYSTEM)
• PR has the correct target branch and milestone
• PR has 'needs review' or 'work-in-progress' label
• If PR is ready for review, a reviewer has been added. (Don't use 'Assignees')
• If there are any front-end changes, before/after screenshots are included
• If this is an important user-facing change, PR or related issue has a 'changelog' label

Reviewer Checklist

• Automated test coverage is satisfactory
• Reviewer has fully tested the PR manually
• PR has been tested for accessibility regressions
• External dependencies files were updated (yarn and pip)
• Documentation is updated
• Link to diff of internal dependency change is included
• CHANGELOG.rst is updated for high-level changes
• Contributor is in AUTHORS.rst

[indirectlylit]

My guess is this is caused by yarnpkg/yarn#5874

One person writes:

Basically the Python virtualenv doesn't work anymore -- Python scripts we've written that are executed with yarn can no longer import the right packages since its (presumably) using a different Python installation than it used to.

FWIW this seems to affect our Linux (Ubuntu) systems but not our MacOS systems; both use virtualenv.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

Merging #3777 into develop will decrease coverage by <.01%.
The diff coverage is 0%.

@@             Coverage Diff             @@
##           develop    #3777      +/-   ##
===========================================
- Coverage    50.24%   50.23%   -0.01%     
===========================================
  Files          593      593              
  Lines        19829    19831       +2     
  Branches      2476     2477       +1     
===========================================
  Hits          9963     9963              
- Misses        9319     9321       +2     
  Partials       547      547

Impacted Files	Coverage Δ
frontend_build/src/read_webpack_json.js	40% <0%> (-6.16%)	⬇️

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[benjaoming]

My guess is this is caused by yarnpkg/yarn#5874

That sounds like the right upstream cause! Thanks for finding it @indirectlylit ! I'll remain subscribed to the issue in order to revert these changes once fixed!

[indirectlylit]

cool. mind updating the "for reasons unknown" comment?

[benjaoming]

Sure, done!