Multiple Node versions in a single workspace

[rohansingh]

Right now, node_repositories always creates a single _nodejs_repo with the name nodejs. Is there any particular reason that it doesn't accept a name parameter to allow creating multiple _nodejs_repo instances?

This would allow having multiple Node versions (say, 8.x and 10.x) in a single project, which is a real-life use case for me.

If this isn't an active design choice or constraint, I'd be happy to work on a PR. It looks like @nodejs is only explicitly referenced in a few places, so it should be straightforward to allow overriding it.

[rohansingh]

Note that this is different from #167 and #183, which seem to be about being able to configure a Node version. That's something we can do now, but I'd like to be able to use different versions for different targets.

[gregmagolan]

Having multiple nodejs versions in a single workspace sounds like a useful feature however we are looking at updating the nodejs rules to use Bazel toolchains for node (https://docs.bazel.build/versions/master/toolchains.html) to support cross-platform remote bazel execution. For example, if you are building on OSX you can still execute actions on GCP (https://blog.bazel.build/2018/10/05/remote-build-execution.html).

Looking at the current code it looks like this shouldn't be too hard to achieve what you'd like at the moment and would be happy to accept a PR if you want to take a shot at it.

We'll be updating to Bazel toolchains for before 1.0 most likely which would invalidate the work but hopefully toolchains will make it easier to achieve this.

[rohansingh]

Do you have a rough idea of the timeline for migrating to toolchains?

If it's later than Q1 then I'll take a look at a PR. Otherwise I'm happy to wait.

[gregmagolan]

/cc @Globegitter Something to keep in mind when you're looking at toolchains. Thanks.

[Toxicable]

#645
tool chain support PR

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