cafile is string 'undefined' on node 4.4 on windows

[reconbot]

The cafile option is the string undefined on windows and node 4.4 and maybe 4.3. I haven't figured out how to reduce this to a simple test case yet.

I noticed this on serialport and it was traced back to node-pre-gyp and the recent node-gyp update #837 that adds the option.

[reconbot]

Specifically 32 bit windows (x86) https://ci.appveyor.com/project/j5js/node-serialport/build/1.0.380

[reconbot]

The work around that seems to work involves setting cafile to a real file and then disabling strict-ssl. We still get warnings but the build doesn't fail.

[bnoordhuis]

I don't think this is a node-gyp bug. Going by your description in mapbox/node-pre-gyp#209 (comment), it sounds like an issue with npm.

I could add a hack to ignore npm_config_cafile when it's the literal string 'undefined', but seeing how most people won't get that update until npm upgrades node-gyp, it might as well get fixed in npm itself.

[reconbot]

I think you're right. As far as I can tell, npm sets the env vars during the install process? I've dug into node-gyp but not yet npm for this. I need to do more research to open the bug. Any help explaining it would help.

[bnoordhuis]

Yes, npm exports the settings in .npmrc as npm_config_-prefixed environment variables to node-gyp (and other processes it spawns, I assume.)

It sounds like there is some interaction going on between cafile and strict-ssl that turns the former into 'undefined'.

[othiym23]

npm has no code that distinguishes between 32 and 64-bit Windows, so my guess is that this actually goes even further back to Node, or isn't caused by 32-bit vs 64-bit Windows builds.

[reconbot]

I'm happy to do more testing. Heck this might be an issue with appveyor too. A good example of CI output showing what fails. https://ci.appveyor.com/project/j5js/node-serialport/build/1.0.370

I did another branch where I just dumped the env from node, and then the env from running npm install. The env is set by npm fine, node processes the env fine. node-pre-gyp has no code that touches the .env specifically.

https://ci.appveyor.com/project/j5js/node-serialport/build/1.0.400/job/lqxq20ahh0au81t1

[reconbot]

I'm going to close this, I'm able to confirm we don't have these issues on this platform when node-pre-gyp isn't involved