build-less

Write C/C++ bindings for Node.js, but with less building

Installation

npm i -g build-less

Purpose

"build-less" is a tool designed to compile NAPI bindings to plain JavaScript code.

This might be useful if you might want to write code with NAPI bindings, but you want to have stable results (because NAPI bindings often do not compile).

Usage

Let's start by initiating our project:

build-less init my-first-project
cd my-first-project

This will create our directory where we will work in, then change into that directory.

Now let's compile our NAPI bindings to JavaScript:

build-less build

We now have our JavaScript files. But if someone installs our package, their machine will still build our code.

We can fix this by cleaning up our directory, using the "cleanup" command:

build-less clean

This should ONLY be used when you are ABSOLUTELY done with the project's version. But let's say we want to modify the NAPI module. We can then use the dirty subcommand:

build-less dirty

We can now modify our code and build it again. Just don't forget to clean up the code. Now let's run our program. Run node ., and you should see this:

Hello, world!

If you saw this, it means "build-less" works! If you didn't, then you might have the wrong/insufficient tools, followed the steps incorrectly, etc.