neon build fails when used with napi-runtime

[mattcollier]

My environment is Ubuntu 20.04 with [email protected]. I created my first project with instructions from: #444

neon new --no-default-features --features=napi-runtime napi-demo
cd napi-demo
npm install

Produces the following output: https://gist.github.com/mattcollier/3a94710fa8c1e6fd0e7de139742b219d#file-log-txt-L36
here is the error:

neon ERR! ENOENT: no such file or directory, copyfile '/home/matt/dev/napi-demo/native/target/debug/libnapi_demo.so' -> '/home/matt/dev/napi-demo/native/index.node'

Although there is logging generating native/index.node, no such file is created during neon install or neon build.

However, these steps do produce the proper index.node file.

cd native
cargo build

After this, I can successfully run the demo using node ./lib/index.js

[kjvalencik]

neon-cli is no longer necessary for building with the n-api backend. https://github.com/neon-bindings/neon/blob/main/RELEASES.md#n-api

It also means that the structure built by neon new is incompatible. The replacement is being described in this RFC: neon-bindings/rfcs#36

Fortunately it's low effort to adapt the output. Remove the neon-cli dependency and replace the build with cargo build.

Keeping the native subdirectory isn't necessary, it can be flattened like in the tests: https://github.com/neon-bindings/neon/tree/main/test/napi

There is one known issue with the updated neon-build crate. It breaks cargo caching on cargo build. It will always relink the binary. cargo check is not impacted. If this isn't acceptible, the only thing neon-build does now is output the shared lib to index.node. It can be removed and replaced by a script in your project that copies from the target directory.

Let me know if you have any questions.

[mattcollier]

@kjvalencik Thanks much. I'm on my way and since this appears to be a known issue, I'm closing it. Perhaps some of what you have just written would be a nice addition to the build instructions in #444