feat(core): Make detaching floatable entitlements on shutdown configurable

[csuermann]

Summary

• By default, floating entitlements are released back to the pool when an n8n instance shuts down gracefully, allowing other instances to use them. However, in some cases, this behavior may be undesirable. This PR introduces a new environment variable, N8N_LICENSE_DETACH_FLOATING_ON_SHUTDOWN, which can be set to false to prevent entitlements from being detached. Note that the license:clear command will still attempt to detach them.
• Utilizes the license SDK's logic for removing the license certificate from the database when running the license:clear command.
• Removes the N8N_LICENSE_AUTO_RENEW_OFFSET environment variable, replacing it with a fixed renewal offset of 72 hours.

Related Linear tickets, Github issues, and Community forum posts

Closes https://linear.app/n8n/issue/CAT-727

Review / Merge checklist

• PR title and summary are descriptive. (conventions)
• Docs updated or follow-up ticket created.
  • Improve docs on License Management n8n-docs#3033
• Tests included.
• PR Labeled with release/backport (if the PR is an urgent fix that needs to be backported)

[MarcL]

👍🏻

[ivov]

CI is failing due to typecheck

[ivov]

Removes the N8N_LICENSE_AUTO_RENEW_OFFSET environment variable, replacing it with a fixed renewal offset of 72 hours.

Is this a breaking change? Can users be relying on a shorter or longer offset and have issues?

[cypress]

n8n    Run #10097

Run Properties:   Passed #10097  •  5c9b100d83: 🌳 🖥️ browsers:node18.12.0-chrome107 🤖 csuermann 🗃️ e2e/*

Project	n8n
Branch Review	license-sdk-2_19_0
Run status	Passed #10097
Run duration	03m 53s
Commit	5c9b100d83: 🌳 🖥️ browsers:node18.12.0-chrome107 🤖 csuermann 🗃️ e2e/*
Committer	Cornelius Suermann
View all properties for this run ↗︎

---

Test results
Failures	0
Flaky	0
Pending	5
Skipped	0
Passing	475
View all changes introduced in this branch ↗︎

[github-actions]

✅ All Cypress E2E specs passed

[csuermann]

Removes the N8N_LICENSE_AUTO_RENEW_OFFSET environment variable, replacing it with a fixed renewal offset of 72 hours.

Is this a breaking change? Can users be relying on a shorter or longer offset and have issues?

Technically, yes — this is a breaking change, since users will no longer be able to configure the renewal offset themselves. However, in practice, there was never a strong reason to make this setting configurable in the first place. The default has always been 72 hours, and it's unlikely that many users have changed it. So while it is a breaking change in theory, I don't believe it should be classified or communicated as such in this case.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

Attention: Patch coverage is 66.66667% with 3 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
packages/cli/src/license.ts	66.66%	2 Missing ⚠️
packages/cli/src/commands/license/clear.ts	66.66%	1 Missing ⚠️

📢 Thoughts on this report? Let us know!

[github-actions]

✅ All Cypress E2E specs passed

[janober]

Got released with n8n@1.87.0