Phase 1: Upgrade Angular 16 to 17

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Summary

Upgrades the Angular framework from v16 to v17 via ng update schematics, along with companion dependency updates and cleanup of deprecated tooling.

Angular & tooling upgrades (via ng update):

• @angular/core, @angular/cli, and all @angular/* packages: 16.2.x → 17.3.x
• @angular/material and @angular/cdk: 16.2.1 → 17.3.10
• @angular-eslint/*: 16.1.x → 17.5.3
• typescript: 4.9.5 → 5.4.5
• browserTarget → buildTarget migration in angular.json (applied by schematic)

Manual dependency updates:

• rxjs: ^6.3.1 → ^7.8.0
• zone.js: ~0.13.1 → ~0.14.10
• @types/node: ^12.11.1 → ^20.0.0
• tsconfig.json: lib and module updated from es2017/es2020 to es2022

Removals:

• protractor + protractor.conf.js + e2e project in angular.json + e2e npm script
• codelyzer (deprecated, replaced by angular-eslint)
• @types/jasminewd2 (Protractor types)
• core-js (unnecessary with modern browsers + Angular 17)

Code fixes:

• error.service.ts: throwError(message) → throwError(() => message) (RxJS 7 breaking change)
• 4 spec files: from 'rxjs/index' → from 'rxjs' (path not exported in RxJS 7)

Production build (ng build --configuration production) and all 43 unit tests pass.

Review & Testing Checklist for Human

• Visually inspect Angular Material components — Material 16→17 finalized the MDC migration. Datepickers (src/app/pets/, src/app/visits/) and mat-select (src/app/vets/vet-edit/) may have subtle styling regressions that unit tests cannot catch. Run ng serve and check these forms.
• Verify RxJS 7 runtime behavior — The throwError factory fix and import path fixes were applied, but confirm error handling works at runtime by triggering a backend error (e.g., start the app without the Spring backend running and verify error messages display correctly).
• Confirm core-js removal is safe — If the app must support older browsers (e.g., IE11), this removal would be a problem. Angular 17 dropped IE11 support, so this should be fine, but verify there are no specific browser support requirements.
• Orphaned e2e/ directory — The Protractor config and angular.json e2e project were removed, but the e2e/ folder with test files still exists on disk. Consider deleting it or keeping it for reference during a future Playwright/Cypress migration.

Notes

• The build builder remains @angular-devkit/build-angular:browser (not migrated to the new application builder). This is deprecated but still functional in Angular 17 and avoids additional config churn in this phase.
• useDefineForClassFields: false is preserved in tsconfig.json as required by this codebase.
• This is Phase 1 of a multi-phase Angular migration (16 → 17 → 18 → 19). Phase 0 (Dockerfile infrastructure) is in PR Phase 0: Update Node to 20-alpine and Nginx to 1.27-alpine #10.

Link to Devin session: https://partner-workshops.devinenterprise.com/sessions/010af0d2621c4376ac0819869f987cf9

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✅ Devin Review: No Issues Found

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