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Using Native Node Modules
The native Node modules are supported by Electron, but since Electron is using a different V8 version from official Node, you have to manually specify the location of Electron's headers when building native modules.
Native Node Module Compatibility
Since Node v0.11.x there were vital changes in the V8 API. So generally all native modules written for Node v0.10.x won't work for newer Node or io.js versions. And because Electron internally uses io.js v3.1.0, it has the same problem.
To solve this, you should use modules that support Node v0.11.x or later, many modules do support both now. For old modules that only support Node v0.10.x, you should use the nan module to port it to v0.11.x or later versions of Node or io.js.
How to Install Native Modules
Three ways to install native modules:
The Easy Way
The most straightforward way to rebuild native modules is via the
electron-rebuild package,
which handles the manual steps of downloading headers and building native modules:
npm install --save-dev electron-rebuild
# Every time you run npm install, run this
node ./node_modules/.bin/electron-rebuild
The npm Way
You can also use npm to install modules. The steps are exactly the same with
Node modules, except that you need to setup some environment variables:
export npm_config_disturl=https://atom.io/download/atom-shell
export npm_config_target=0.33.1
export npm_config_arch=x64
export npm_config_runtime=electron
HOME=~/.electron-gyp npm install module-name
The node-gyp Way
To build Node modules with headers of Electron, you need to tell node-gyp
where to download headers and which version to use:
$ cd /path-to-module/
$ HOME=~/.electron-gyp node-gyp rebuild --target=0.29.1 --arch=x64 --dist-url=https://atom.io/download/atom-shell
The HOME=~/.electron-gyp changes where to find development headers. The
--target=0.29.1 is version of Electron. The --dist-url=... specifies
where to download the headers. The --arch=x64 says the module is built for
64bit system.