Skip Build Unless Installing on IBM i

[abmusse]

Original report by David Russo (Bitbucket: DavidRusso, GitHub: DavidRusso).

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I work on a package that installs on multiple platforms, including IBM i. I've put idb-connector under optionalDependencies in my package.json -- this allows NPM to proceed with installing my package on non-IBM i platforms, where idb-connector obviously does not work. Programming logic in my package then selects the appropriate database connector for the appropriate platform.

This allows me to install on any platform, but I get a lot of unnecessary output and error messages when installing on non-IBM i platforms because NPM goes through the motions of trying to build idb-connector. To see what I mean, try 'npm install profoundjs' on a Windows PC.

I'm wondering if it's possible to set up so that NPM does not try to build/install idb-connector unless installing on IBM i.

Maybe it's just a matter of setting the 'os' key in idb-connector's package.json?

https://docs.npmjs.com/files/package.json#os

[abmusse]

Original comment by Xu Meng (Bitbucket: mengxumx, GitHub: dmabupt).

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The host operating system is determined by process.platform which currently return aix on IBM i. So the AIX system will still install it ( while many other os not).
We may let it return the true os name in future Node.js releases. But for now, seems we can only use aix to distinguish.

[abmusse]

Original comment by Xu Meng (Bitbucket: mengxumx, GitHub: dmabupt).

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commit 6a16b3b

[abmusse]

Original comment by David Russo (Bitbucket: DavidRusso, GitHub: DavidRusso).

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Thanks, this will be a nice improvement! I'll try it out when it's released.

[dmabupt]

Hello @DavidRusso , I have upgraded idb-connector to 1.1.8 which contains the changes.
Btw, we have moved the repository along with the pre-compiled binaries to GitHub. So more tests are appreciated

[ThePrez]

This change does not work for AIX. Can you make it for AIX too?

[kadler]

I'm not sure how it could not work on AIX, since it only references "aix" for which builds to skip. Or do AIX builds put the version in the OS string?

[ThePrez]

The build is not skipped on AIX as it should be, and proceeds to fail.

[abmusse]

In our package.json we specify "os": "aix"

For us process.platform returns "aix" so

• install script continues

• searches for pre built binaries and cannot find any matching "package_name": "{module_name}-v{version}-{node_abi}-ibmi-{arch}.tar.gz"

• Then falls back to build from source and fails.

os.type() returns OS400 appropriately.

For it to skip on AIX we would need to dig into how process.platform is determined or find another work around.

For now we can simply state package does not support AIX in readme.

I've seen some packages override install script which is probably not a good thing.

Example is Appmetrics

[kadler]

Why does it need to work on AIX in the first place? This requires libdb400, which isn't available on AIX anyway.

[abmusse]

Right it cannot work on AIX. The failure is expected

Our package.json whitelists AIX as our only supported platform

npm install idb-connector

On every other platform will output something like

Unsupported platform for idb-connector
npm ERR! code EBADPLATFORM
npm ERR! notsup Unsupported platform for [email protected]: wanted {"os":"aix","arch":"any"} 

but on AIX it will actually try to build the project and fail.

I guess we should just clearly state in our readme this package is only for IBM i

[dmabupt]

PR #57 is created.

[ThePrez]

This is holding up React.js support on IBM i, so I consider this a high-priority item (or working to find alternative implementation for default-gateway)

[kadler]

@ThePrez I'm trying to figure how that could be. Can you link to that issue?

[abmusse]

@kadler
silverwind/default-gateway#5
silverwind/default-gateway#10

[ThePrez]

We could skip the native parts in the .gyp file based on an "os400" condition. That would be pretty clean

[silverwind]

npm has issues with honoring the os property in some cases, so it it is not enough to prevent a build on non-AIX. Anyways, I have now decided to only accept AIX support in my module if it is a pure-JS implementation. Native modules are just not worth the headaches they bring in a cross-platform module.

Regarding React: We decided to remove the os property entirely, so dependency installs will not fail on AIX, allowing dependants to treat the thrown unsupported platform error themselves. The fix is pending at sindresorhus/internal-ip#25.

[dmabupt]

idb-connector v1.1.9 is released now. It takes the code from PR #58