pkg-prebuilds

An opionated lightweight alternative to node-gyp-build & prebuildify, that is build tooling agnostic.

Usage

It is recommended to use this with github-actions to produce your builds. You can see an up-to-date workflow utilising this in @julusian/jpeg-turbo

Firstly, a js file is required to define various configuration of your binary. This is needed in two places, so is recommended to be a simple js file. The options are defined as:

interface Options {
 /**
     * Unique name of the binding. 
     * This must match the output file as specified in CMake/node-gyp
     * Typically this will be the same as the name in your package.json, but you are free to make it different
     */
  name: string,
  /**
   * The node-api versions that are built.
   */
  napi_versions?: number[],
  /**
   * Whether the bindings are labelled with the arm version (eg armv7, arm64v8)
   */
  armv?: boolean,
}

The formal definition of the above is also stored in bindings.d.ts.

There are a few components to this library as follows.

pkg-prebuilds-copy

Copy a prebuilt binary into the prebuilds folder.

Example: pkg-prebuilds-copy --baseDir build/Release --source jpeg-turbo.node --name=jpeg-turbo --strip --napi_version=7 --arch=x64

This takes a few paramaters to figure out the correct filename:

• baseDir - Base path to built binary files (required)
• source - The built file to copy (required)
• name - The name of the binding as defined in the options object (required)
• napi_version - The node-api version it was built for (required)
• strip - Whether to strip the file of debug symbols (default: false)
• libc - The libc it was built for (glibc, musl. only applicable to linux) (default: glibc)
• runtime - The runtime it was built for (node, electron, nwjs) (default: node)
• arch - The architecture it was built for (x64, arm64 etc) (default: current process arch)
• platform - The platform it was built for (win32, linux, darwin) (default: current process platform)
• extraFiles - Extra files to be copied, typically so/dll/dylib files that must reside next to the .node file

pkg-prebuilds-verify

A simple script to verify if there is a prebuild for the current environment, and exit successfully, or with an error code.
Intended to be used with pkg-prebuilds-verify ./binding-options.js || cmake-js ....

This command listens to the following environment variables as override:

• npm_config_build_from_source
• npm_config_arch
• npm_config_platform
• npm_config_runtime

These variables allow for ensuring the correct version as needed for electron-builder or other tools to cross-build.

require('pkg-prebuilds')

In the most simple form

const binding = require("pkg-prebuilds")(
  __dirname,
  require("./binding-options")
);

Where ./binding-options.js is the file exporting the options object.

This is very similar to how bindings or node-gyp-build operate, but is much more verbose in requiring the options object.

Breaking changes

v0.2.0

A command such as yarn pkg-prebuilds-copy --source build/Release/testbinding.node --name=testbinding, but be changed to yarn pkg-prebuilds-copy --baseDir build/Release --source testbinding.node --name=testbinding.
This is to allow for supplying the new --extraFiles parameter which is also relative to baseDir.

Why another tool?

node-gyp-build is very based around node-gyp, and getting support for cmake-js stalled many years ago. Additionally, node-gyp-build is clever about detecting the correct file for you, but this does not work well if it gets bundled with webpack, pkg or alternatives. Because the prebuilds are not named with the package they are for, it is very hard to make them coexist after bundling.

This is written to be simple. It doesnt try to do any magic, it simply copies files into an organised structure and then provides a way of loading the correct one. It expects callers to provide any information it may need, rather than it trying to figure it out. While this is more effort for developers using this library, it has a minimal cost and helps ensure it will work consistently for all users.

License

See LICENSE.

Copyright © Julian Waller. All Rights Reserved.