Feature request: provide pre-compiled binaries (official builds) in npm packages

[Mithgol]

Currently npm install sqlite3 requires building node-sqlite3 from the source with node-gyp (on Windows the prerequisites are Python and MSVC, the latter is huge).

To get rid of this requirement (and thus to attract more end users and less building-related issues reported), please accomplish the following:

1. Require (and use) node-bindings.
2. Compile binary part of node-sqlite3 for the supported platforms (win32/ia32, darwin/x64, linux/ia32, linux/x64... sunos/ia32?), put the resulting binaries inside your npm package and let node-bindings pick one on user's side.
3. Put binding.gyp in .npmignore, otherwise npm will still attempt to build from the source. (Do not forget to add some contents of .gitignore to .npmignore when you create the latter, but only some: npm should not ignore the binaries.)
4. (optional) Put binaries in .gitignore to prevent them from being hosted on GitHub. (This step is necessary only if you hate mixing sources with binaries. This step may also be completed already if you build in build/, which is currently in .gitignore.)

After that npm install sqlite3 would involve only downloading and unpacking, and thus would just work.

[springmeyer]

great, thanks very much for this description. I've known this was possible, just had not ran into good docs yet.

[Mithgol]

I am glad to feel myself helpful, but also let me ask whether you are planning such builds, or waiting for Node 0.8 stable, or something else.

[Mithgol]

As I see now, the last commit in node-sqlite3 master branch happened in July 27 (≈50 days ago), so the module seems more or less complete.

If it indeed is, then you could build the OS-specific binaries once… and update them only when some new SQLite version happens or when a new Node version breaks binary compatibility.

[ErisDS]

Is there any chance that this will ever happen?

[springmeyer]

I think we should provide pre-compiled binaries for windows at least, so yes I think it will happen, either when I find the time or if someone else takes it on.

[ErisDS]

I'm glad there's agreement that it should happen, that's positive at least. I'd love to say I would do it, but it's not really my area of expertise (yet).

[calvinmetcalf]

I've had mixed luck building it on Open Shift (Red Hat's cloud), precompiled binaries that target RHEL/Fedora wouldn't be helpful.

[springmeyer]

update on this: I'd still like to provide windows binaries, but we need to devise a solid way to do this that:

• does not mix binaries for windows in everyone else's download
• does not preclude all other platforms from building using the binding.gyp

If anyone has ideas or best practices from other modules please share.

[Mithgol]

I have an idea.

You could have some preinstall npm script that checks process.platform. If that's 'win32', a pre-built binary is downloaded to /build/Release/node_sqlite3.node. Otherwise the binding.gyp is copied to the package's root from some subdirectory where it was previously stored.

Alternatively you could use binding.gyp's own language to prevent windows builds from building (I don't know any details, it just seems feasible), and then use some postinstall npm script to download a pre-built win32 binary if process.platform === 'win32'.

[springmeyer]

@Mithgol - great ideas. I like the idea of doing it in binding.gyp if possible. This way you could easily pass a flag to npm install that would be passed to node-gyp install that could request a source compile on windows. So the default behavior could be to pull a binary but people like me that want to compile from source could do it easily without having to move around bindings.gyp or remove pre/post install items from the package.json. Another reason I'm more inclined to try to embed the logic in binding.gyp actions is the preinstall confusion I mention at #151 (comment) which is upcoming in recent npm versions.

[Mithgol]

Having read #151 I have to admit that's a good reason… @isaacs toying with preinstall semantics does not leave you any other choice.

[ErisDS]

This all sounds really exciting, but are you only planning to add builds for windows?
Mac doesn't build nicely either unless you have xcode and a tonne of other dependencies installed, and although linux flavors will do a build out of the box, it's doesn't work so nicely on node hosting platforms like nodejitsu and appfog.

Ideally, the builds would be available for all common platforms with a switch to build if you want to.