72 lines
3 KiB
Markdown
72 lines
3 KiB
Markdown
# Using Native Node Modules
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The native Node modules are supported by Electron, but since Electron is
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using a different V8 version from official Node, you have to manually specify
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the location of Electron's headers when building native modules.
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## Native Node Module Compatibility
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Native modules might break when Node starts using a new version of V8.
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To make sure the module you're interested in will work with Electron, you should
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check if it supports the internal Node version used by Electron.
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You can check what version of Node is used in Electron by looking it up in
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the [releases](https://github.com/electron/electron/releases) page or by using
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`process.version` (see [Quick Start](https://github.com/electron/electron/blob/master/docs/tutorial/quick-start.md)
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for example).
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Consider using [NAN](https://github.com/nodejs/nan/) for your own modules, since
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it makes it easier to support multiple versions of Node. It's also helpful for
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porting old modules to newer versions of Node so they can work with Electron.
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## How to Install Native Modules
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Three ways to install native modules:
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### The Easy Way
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The most straightforward way to rebuild native modules is via the
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[`electron-rebuild`](https://github.com/paulcbetts/electron-rebuild) package,
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which handles the manual steps of downloading headers and building native modules:
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```sh
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npm install --save-dev electron-rebuild
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# Every time you run "npm install", run this
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./node_modules/.bin/electron-rebuild
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# On Windows if you have trouble, try:
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.\node_modules\.bin\electron-rebuild.cmd
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```
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### The npm Way
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You can also use `npm` to install modules. The steps are exactly the same with
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Node modules, except that you need to setup some environment variables:
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```bash
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export npm_config_disturl=https://atom.io/download/atom-shell
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export npm_config_target=0.33.1
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export npm_config_arch=x64
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export npm_config_runtime=electron
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HOME=~/.electron-gyp npm install module-name
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```
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### The node-gyp Way
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To build Node modules with headers of Electron, you need to tell `node-gyp`
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where to download headers and which version to use:
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```bash
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$ cd /path-to-module/
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$ HOME=~/.electron-gyp node-gyp rebuild --target=0.29.1 --arch=x64 --dist-url=https://atom.io/download/atom-shell
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```
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The `HOME=~/.electron-gyp` changes where to find development headers. The
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`--target=0.29.1` is version of Electron. The `--dist-url=...` specifies
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where to download the headers. The `--arch=x64` says the module is built for
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64bit system.
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### Packaging and signing apps with native modules
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Native modules need to be signed. If using electron-osx-sign, be sure to include the path to the built binaries in the argument list (eg electron-osx-sign yourapp/YourApp.app yourapp/YourApp.app/Contents/Resources/app/node_modules/nativemodule/build/release/nativemodule). Also note that native modules may have intermediate files produced which should not be included (as they would also need to be signed). Add --ignore=.+\.o$ to your electron-packager build step to ignore these files (their unsigned inclusion will result in the ITMS-90135 error).
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