support node 14

[koonpeng]

This is an ongoing work to support node >= v14.

node v14's version of v8 has changed the API for ArrayBuffer::New which cause rclnodejs to stop working. Instead of using createArrayBufferFromAddress, this PR changes to use type array's constructor to create a view of the underlying buffer. As a side effect, there should also no longer be a need to manually free the underlying buffer, v8 should automatically free it when there is no more references.

Tests are failing on node >= v14.9 due to nodejs/node#35620. And is failing on < v14.9 possibly due to lovell/sharp#2196. The fix for the former should be released in the next version so I will put this on hold until that happens.

TODO: Test for leaks with asan.

[minggangw]

So I reckon this PR could also work properly on node < 14 (before change of ArrayBuffer::New), right?

[koonpeng]

I don't see any reason for it to break on older versions, but I haven't tested it yet.

I'm looking at how I can make automated asan test easier, I'm getting lots of noise from other modules currently.

[minggangw]

Great! 👍

[coveralls]

Coverage remained the same at 91.747% when pulling c924a36 on fix/node-14 into 6f8a1a1 on develop.

[minggangw]

Is it possible that the crash is caused by node-ffi-napi, please check out node-ffi-napi/ref-napi#47

[koonpeng]

Is it possible that the crash is caused by node-ffi-napi, please check out node-ffi-napi/ref-napi#47

It does look like the same bug, hopefully it will work be fixed in the next release of ref-napi. When that happens I will test if the changes in this PR is needed, in the mean time I think I will continue leaving this as a draft.

[minggangw]

Hope so, thanks!

[csmith-rtr]

@minggangw @koonpeng are you planning to complete the transition to Node v14? Support for Node v12 is ending in April 2022. At this point, it might make more sense to go straight to v16.

[wayneparrott]

@csmith-rtr Work on this has been progressing. See the node-16 branch https://github.com/RobotWebTools/rclnodejs/tree/nodejs-16 that is under development. I've been running it for the past 2 weeks with node 12 & 16 on foxy and galactic with no obvious issues. Hopefully it will merge to head (develop branch) soon.

[csmith-rtr]

great! I hadn't seen that branch.