Currently, I’m experimenting with building Node.js projects (different bundlers and other kinds of stuff). And I got a simple idea about bundling Node.js to a single binary for Linux, macOS, or Windows.
There are two packages nexe and pkg both of them don’t really support native .node modules that are used by packages like bcrypt or realm. Were you performing a similar compilation? I would be extremely happy to see some real-world examples (I could not find them on GitHub).
But... for what? It's more like an idea for fun what we're able to archive with Node.js. Even if it will be working (I get it working on cjs packages without native modules) example project with hello wold may have a size above 30MB.
One cool observation is that #vercel/ncc is able to compile my project into a single directory, but it also doesn’t work without node_modules (probably, I had no environment to test it)
Update V1: Building realm is impossible in such kinds of projects, the simplest solution is to not use realm in node apps because it will crash the binary build (it's because realm is using tons of other packages such as electron or react-native which doesn't work at all when it comes to desktop platforms.
My code is available at the following repository: https://github.com/keinsell/typecraft
After days of struggling with researching how pkg works and searching for potential alternatives, I've found caxa which were working for me in a good way, and on the road, I also got pkg working fine with (actually only tested on bcrypt) native modules. My core insights on using pkg for building Node.js binaries are:
Use matrix-builds on CI to build package ex. win package from windows host, mac from macos host etc.
Be sure to include native modules to assets (there you can use require() function in JavaScript (example below) or use pkg.assets object in package.json - I don't really get it but it's contained in my issue on vercel/pkg - vercel/pkg#1473
+ require('bcrypt/lib/binding/napi-v3/bcrypt_lib.node')
export async function main() { /* ... */ }
Some modules are still build-crashing, and the good example is realm but I'll still search for a way of building it and including it into node.js binary application. All of my progress on researching Node.js builds will be available on https://github.com/keinsell/typecraft and this StackOverflow answer will be updated over time and my new discoveries.
Read this resource with examples and you will be able to compile it to a binary release. Of course, nexe is necessary but with pty.js you can successfully compile it with all the native libraries. Have a look at the source: https://www.jedi.be/blog/2013/05/14/compiling-packaging-a-nodejs-project-as-a-single-binary/
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i will try to give you a little of context.
With my team we are trying to migrate MUI v3 to v4 in a reactJs project. We did it with the project itself and it works! but, some kind of problems came up when we navigated to certain windows that use a certain library to work.
This library was developed by other guy that is not in the company anymore and we are not in touch neither, but, we have access to the library GitHub repository, them are two actually.
https://github.com/rjpizarro/forms
https://github.com/rjpizarro/make-request
i've never had to do this so, i decided to clone the project then install the dependencies and run it.
I'm using nvm so in that moment i was working with node v12 and i got some errors when i executed the npm start ("start": "webpack --watch").
If i use node 10 the scrips runs perfectly but in the entire project we are using node 12 so i'm not sure what is the problem here.
i'm wonder if it could be a problem when i'll try to migrate from MUI v1 to v4 and use the modified library into my project again, or in first place, why its working rigth now?
Anyway i just wanted to know, just if i need it, Could i use different versions of node in a library and then use other newer version into the entire project?
Could this make some negatives effect into my entire project?
Which is the best way to migrate MUI into this library and put it in my project again?
Each nodejs process (including all the modules/libraries it loads) has exactly one version of nodejs running. It isn't possible to have two separate versions of nodejs in the same process each running different parts of the code.
You could make two separate nodejs apps that each run under a different version of nodejs that communicate with each other via some interprocess communication, but they have to be two separate applications/processes.
If you want to run everything in one process (on one version of nodejs), then you will need to test and fix all your libraries to run on that one version of nodejs.
I'm just starting to learn Angular, I installed in my Ubuntu Linux:
Angular CLI: 7.1.4. and
Node: 10.14.2.
My question is, why one project is too large? I mean a simple "helloworld" is 334MB, I don't know why, Is it possible resize it? or delete any folder that is unnecessary? Or Is there something wrong with my installation? (how can I detect that?)
The bigger folder is node_modules, and when I create my projects, generates a lot of folders.
I was reading about "angular lazy loading", but I'm new.. It is not totally clear for me.
this is the folder spaces:
Please... I hope somebody can help me...
best regards
You might be using big bundles which are not needed, so you can break them up:
https://medium.com/#julienetienne/javascript-bundles-are-too-big-break-up-the-libraries-3be87d5ef487
In modern JavaScript, projects require modules that themselves require modules that require modules... resulting in node_modules directory with hundreds of dependencies. A 100Kb library might be included because someone needed one function from it. JavaScript is not compiled, so all that source tends to be rather big. This is an unfortunate, but unavoidable truth; your Angular project directories will be big, and there's nothing you can do about it. It is perfectly normal.
The good part: modern JavaScript deployment typically includes packing up those libraries with Webpack or Parcel or similar code bundlers. Most of them implement "tree shaking", which analyses the code to find only the functions that are potentially utilised starting from the entry point, and only bundle those, ignoring the rest. This means that 100Kb library whose one function is used is transformed into just that one function in the final distribution bundle.
Not all of the bundlers are equally good at it at this point. For example, Webpack cannot tree-shake the CommonJS modules, only ES6 ones.
You can remove node_modules folder when you are not going to use the app.
And, when you need work on the application, you can re-generate node_modules using the command: npm install
Those are just node-modules, they are needed for building the project, but not necessarily everything inside of them will be deployed to production. As Amadan said, there is a process of tree-shaking (filtering only used modules) and also in production you use the minified version of the same JS code (where for example whitespace is missing and variable-names are shortened), among other optimizations. A production-optimized Angular project should not be more than a 100KB for a hello-world application.
In the provided image I see packages like
selenium-webdriver
protractor
Those belong to dev-dependencies (see your package.json file) because they are used for testing. When building for production, no code from dev-dependencies should be included. The typescript package (which is nr.2 in size in your screenshot) will also not be present in production because types like string are only used for writing Typescript code, but the browser receives Javascript, which it is compiled to.
I understand that packages hold several modules, but I'm starting to get confused as to if packages and modules are dependencies. Also, libraries to me maybe seem like packages you install via NPM, Nuget, RubyGems, Bower, Homebrew, or Chocolatey. So are libraries packages? Dependencies are something you need to load within your application, to have a certain functionality, but aren't some libraries(jQuery) seen as a dependency? So yea, what are the differences between these concepts?
Libraries are just a bunch of code anyone can use. For example, React.js is a JavaScript library for building front end components.
If I decide to use this library in my app, then React will become one of the modules (aka an installed instance of the library) that my app depends on. So dependencies are pretty much all of the libraries your app depends on, in order to run the way you expect it to run.
I asked the same question you did about dependencies, and I learned that it's a matter of understanding how these terms relate to one another rather than finding isolated definitions for each of them.
Hope this helps!
Basically a package is a pack with some features which fullfills some functionality of your app.
Once you install any package using npm then the package is installed as a dependency in your app inside your package.json file along with its modules(aka libraries consist of classes) stored inside node_modules folder.
I hope its clear now.
I'm looking for the proper way to distribute/deploy a node.js app that would run as a small webserver on the user's machine.
Is there a stub method or install script or a "install wizard" that would download all node_modules dependencies, download the latest nodejs binary, set up the environment, etc... or I have to distribute it bulk with everything packed? Is there any guide for that purpose?
Edited :
You could install node and npm, download your dependencies by running npm install in the command line (first declare them within your package.json) only then users can run your script. This is how you do development in Node.js, or deploy to a development server. See using npm. You could automate that with a shell script if that is what you are after.
However, when distributing programs to end-users that might not be the best approach. Linux users are used to a package (.deb for instance) and Windows users are used to an .exe or a setup wizard.
That is why I recommended the tools below. I also assumed you were targeting Windows as this is less of a problem is unix-like environments.
If you want a single file (.exe), pkg and nexe are made for that purpose. These Node.js tools are used by the developer to compile JavaScript code into a single executable binary that is convenient for end-users and Windows deployment. The resulting .exe file is very light and does not require node to be installed on the end-user’s computers.
Electron along with electron-packager can produce setup wizards, but it installs a lot of files even for the smallest program. Your program will include all of node and webkit, that is why it produces heavy installs.
NSIS can also create a setup wizard, it is simple and does common stuff well (copying files, running shell scripts).
Original answer:
Short answer is: not really.
You have to keep in mind that Javascript is and has always been interpreted, so until recently never compiled to binary as you might do with other languages. Some exploration has been going on, but essentially you won’t get a "good practice" answer.
The long answer is, maybe, for some limited use cases:
There is the fresh new pkg that does exactly this, and it looks promising.
There has been nexe for a while, it works great for some use cases (maybe yours). Native/compiled modules are still an issue however.
Electron might work for a full blown app with a significant user interface, but it is not light or compact.
You could always use browserify to concatenate and uglify all your code with the modules you use and then make an installer with something like NSIS to setup node and your script. Native modules would still be a problem however.
This question already has answers here:
Is it possible to create desktop applications with node.js? [duplicate]
(5 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
Is there a way to compile a node.js application?
I maybe very late but you can use "nexe" module that compile nodejs + your script in one executable: https://github.com/crcn/nexe
EDIT 2021: Nexe's latest release is from 2017 and it appears that development has otherwise slowed, so the more-widely-used alternative from Vercel should also be considered these days: pkg
Node.js runs on top of the V8 Javascript engine, which itself optimizes performance by compiling javascript code into native code... so no reason really for compiling then, is there?
https://developers.google.com/v8/design#mach_code
EncloseJS.
You get a fully functional binary without sources.
Native modules also supported. (must be placed in the same folder)
JavaScript code is transformed into native code at compile-time using V8 internal compiler. Hence, your sources are not required to execute the binary, and they are not packaged.
Perfectly optimized native code can be generated only at run-time based on the client's machine. Without that info EncloseJS can generate only "unoptimized" code. It runs about 2x slower than NodeJS.
Also, node.js runtime code is put inside the executable (along with your code) to support node API for your application at run-time.
Use cases:
Make a commercial version of your application without sources.
Make a demo/evaluation/trial version of your app without sources.
Make some kind of self-extracting archive or installer.
Make a closed source GUI application using node-thrust.
No need to install node and npm to deploy the compiled application.
No need to download hundreds of files via npm install to deploy your application. Deploy it as a single independent file.
Put your assets inside the executable to make it even more portable.
Test your app against new node version without installing it.
There was an answer here: Secure distribution of NodeJS applications. Raynos said: V8 allows you to pre-compile JavaScript.
You can use the Closure compiler to compile your javascript.
You can also use CoffeeScript to compile your coffeescript to javascript.
What do you want to achieve with compiling?
The task of compiling arbitrary non-blocking JavaScript down to say, C sounds very daunting.
There really isn't that much speed to be gained by compiling to C or ASM. If you want speed gain offload computation to a C program through a sub process.
Now this may include more than you need (and may not even work for command line applications in a non-graphical environment, I don't know), but there is nw.js.
It's Blink (i.e. Chromium/Webkit) + io.js (i.e. Node.js).
You can use node-webkit-builder to build native executable binaries for Linux, OS X and Windows.
If you want a GUI, that's a huge plus. You can build one with web technologies.
If you don't, specify "node-main" in the package.json (and probably "window": {"show": false} although maybe it works to just have a node-main and not a main)
I haven't tried to use it in exactly this way, just throwing it out there as a possibility. I can say it's certainly not an ideal solution for non-graphical Node.js applications.
javascript does not not have a compiler like for example Java/C(You can compare it more to languages like PHP for example). If you want to write compiled code you should read the section about addons and learn C. Although this is rather complex and I don't think you need to do this but instead just write javascript.