Cross platform prebuild

[fishbone1]

My Electron project's target platform is Windows x64, but it's built on a Linux system. I already have a native module which uses "prebuild". To install dependecies I run:

CI=1 npm_config_platform=win32 npm_config_arch=x64 npm_config_target=9.1.1 npm_config_runtime=electron npm ci

This has been working correctly.

Now I need to add another native module: ffi-napi. They use prebuildify according to this pull request. It seems, it doesn't work the same way here.

I get this error message:

[email protected] install /.../myapp/node_modules/ffi-napi
node-gyp-build
gyp WARN install got an error, rolling back install
gyp ERR! configure error
gyp ERR! stack Error: 404 response downloading https://nodejs.org/dist/v9.1.1/node-v9.1.1-headers.tar.gz

I see two major problems here:

1. It tries to download headers for NodeJS v9.1.1, but "9.1.1" is the version of Electron. I guess there is no NodeJS 9.1.1 and that's probably the cause for the 404 status code.
2. Downloading headers means it's trying to build instead of using the prebuild - but I'm not sure about that.

It's interesting that ff-napi also has another native dependencies ref-napi and that it seems there are no problems with that:

[email protected] install /.../myapp/node_modules/ref-napi
node-gyp-build
[email protected] install /.../myapp/node_modules/ffi-napi
gyp WARN install got an error, rolling back install
(see above)

[fishbone1]

It seems the problem is that

prebuild-install has two arguments: runtime and target

VS

node-gyp-build has one argument target for both values with format [email protected]

So either the first native module installs successfully or the second :-(

[mafintosh]

I think this is a problem with the FFI module.

I just did some testing myself, on my mac, and when I install ffi-napi it also starts to compile.
It does that because the test to load the prebuild fails.

You can repro this (sometimes) doing this

cd ffi-napi
node -e "require('./prebuilds/darwin-x64/node.napi.uv1.node')"
Assertion failed: (0), function uv_close, file ../deps/uv/src/unix/core.c, line 174.
Abort trap: 6

Might wanna open an issue there about that. My guess is that the dispose logic has some bug potentially, https://github.com/node-ffi-napi/node-ffi-napi/blob/master/src/ffi.cc#L17

[fishbone1]

Yes I can see that it also starts to compile, even if I remove the first (prebuild) module. A question about that: How is ffi-napi responsible for that? I thought this decision is made by node-gyp-build? I understand your case, because you directly require() it, but in my case I just run npm install and I cannot see a hook or something. (I'm just curious how that works)

But even if it wouldn't compile there is still a compatibility issue between prebuild-install and node-gyp-build as they treat the target parameter differently (see my comment above).

[johnjcool]

perhaps this could be helpful

package.json:

{
  ...
  "scripts": {
    ...
    "postinstall": "electron-builder install-app-deps && rm -rf ./node_modules/ffi-napi/build",
    ...
  }
  ...
}