N-API support

[NickNaso]

Node 8 has a new experimental feature called N-API which is aimed at reducing maintenance cost for node native addons. Check out this blog for more details on its benefits.

microtime is a popular module, and in order to help the Node.js community make the important transition to N-API, we are hoping you will be able to work with us in order to migrate microtime to N-API. Your support and feedback is important in making this effort a success.

We (N-API team) have built a preliminary port of microtime on top of N-API as part of our effort to understand the API surface used by native modules. We used this port and the port of some other modules to determine which areas to focus on converting to N-API.
This port has all of the NAN code removed and replaced by N-API equivalents. While it passes all the unit tests, it might need a bit more refinement before getting merged in.
Please take a look if you're interested. I will be happy to answer questions about the port, point to documentation/code, etc. I'm also happy to open a PR if you're happy with the port in it's current shape.

If you like, you can join our WG meeting which happens every Thursday at 1:30 Eastern / 10:30 Pacific US time, to discuss any issues or ask us any questions.

If you don't want to take a dependency on a feature that still has "experimental" status, we understand, and a good option might be to maintain a branch that uses N-API, that is kept mostly up to date with development occurring in microtime/master. We have some precedence to follow with node.bcrypt.js which recently published a N-API version of their module. Of course we'd appreciate feedback about anything we can do to improve the development or migration experience.

You can find my work here: https://github.com/NickNaso/node-microtime/tree/napi

I will be happy to contribute and help in any way.

[wadey]

Thank you for your time in starting this patch! I have been looking into N-API a bit but haven’t had the time to fully research it and start working on a port. I will try to review over your branch soon and give you some feedback and keep the ball rolling.

A quick question, how does backwards compatibility with versions of Node prior to 8 work?

[NickNaso]

Hi @wadey ,
it's compatible with 4 5 6 7 8. Today we landed the PR to get N-API out from the experimental and in the next months we will work to investigate and solve any compatibility problems with the LTS versions.
I think that we need to create a branch called for example "napi" so I can execute the PR on it. After that we can iterate to over it and at the end publish a tagged version of microtime like reported here: https://nodejs.org/en/docs/guides/publishing-napi-modules/
Let me know if you are agree and how you want to proceed.

[mhdawson]

Compatibility has several dimensions. Using node-addon-api it can compile and run with matching 4 6 and 8 (I'd have to check on the 5 and 7 but @NickNaso probably already did that). To get the compile once/run with later versions that is currently in master, in process for 8.x and 6.x (some backports are required). We aim to get to the point were you can compile on 6.x and then run on later versions.

[wadey]

@NickNaso I've created a branch napi that you can open your PR against. We can do the code review there. Thanks!

[NickNaso]

@wadey Hi all seems work fine if you want take a look at PR #57

[NickNaso]

microtime is one of the most important native add-on and it is tracked by citgm, but in this issue (nodejs/node#25060) seems that it will not work well in the future version of Node.js (v12).

N-API could help to manage this kind of issues. In general using N-API maintainers do not take care of the changes that will happen in V8 or node.
Please consider the idea to work together on N-API version and release it.

[wadey]

ok I would like to resume the work on this and get it released. What is the best doc with the most up to date process for releasing a add-on with N-API support? Or can you summarize what I need to do? Thanks for your help with this.

[wadey]

Is this still the best reference? https://nodejs.org/en/docs/guides/publishing-napi-modules/

[wadey]

I have published microtime v3.0.0-0 (with tag n-api) with N-API support. Can you please test this and confirm?

Branch is here: https://github.com/wadey/node-microtime/tree/napi

[NickNaso]

@wadey Sorry if I did not answer at your previous question. I just tried to install and use the tagged version (n-api) and it worked well.
Thanks for your work.

[mhdawson]

So I guess the next question is the steps/possibility of updating so that the main version that people get when they download being the n-api version by default? (if that is not already the case)

[wadey]

I wanted to see if I could maintain compatibility with Node v4 and v6 with the new n-api version, and I was able to with 3.0.0-1! I am going to do a little more testing with this and then release without a tag. Thank you!

[mhdawson]

@wadey thanks!

[BonesyWonesy]

Thanks!

[wadey]

N-API released as v3.0.0 with no tag! Let me know if you have any issues.