Node-webkit crashes on startup (Windows 7 x64)

[jgrenon]

Node-webkit crashes on startup (Windows 7 x64)

[talss89]

I've spotted nwjs/nw.js#1006

Zipping and dropping on to executable still does not work however. I don't think it's related.

[talss89]

Loading mongoose 3.8.7 into a fresh node-webkit 0.8.4 (with no other modules / loaded) results in exactly the same behaviour.

Looks like the issue might be with the mongoose package.

[jgrenon]

thanks for the feedback. I’ll test on Linux and Windows and report any issues back to the node-webkit project.
Are there any errors when you execute npm (npm-debug.log?), sounds like some native code is failing here.

On Wednesday, February 12, 2014 at 17:31, Tom Lawton wrote:

Loading mongoose 3.8.7 into a fresh vanilla node-webkit 0.8.4 results in exactly the same behaviour.
Looks like the issue might be with the mongoose package.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub (#9 (comment)).

[talss89]

Hi. Nope, no npm-debug.log is written, and npm install does not throw any errors.

I believe this is a similar issue nwjs/nw.js#1174

Compiling mongoose/mongodb/BSON with nw-gyp results in no errors, but node-webkit continues to crash.

In addition, mongoose/mongodb/kerberos uses node-gyp to build. nw-gyp fails to build it on my system. The output is here: https://gist.github.com/talss89/8979776

The kerberos module has a test suite, run via npm test. Needless to say, this fails 2/2 tests.

It could be that my MSVS environment is broken - it's only in use for node-gyp on this machine.

In particular the warning below seems to suggest something fishy going on in the MS toolchain.

warning C4530: C++ exception handler used, but unwind semantics are not enabled. Specify /EHsc 

Joel - It'll be interesting to see if everything is working on your Windows box.

[talss89]

Ok, here's the fix.

• CD to src\node_modules\mongoose\node_modules\mongodb\node_modules\bson
• Execute nw-gyp clean && nw-gyp configure --target=0.8.4 && nw-gyp build
• The app should boot OK.

It's a bit of a hassle having to perform this step on every npm install. I don't have much experience with NPM / *-gyp so can't really offer a permanent solution aside from including the above steps in the readme. But that's a last resort IMO.

The kerberos compilation issue turned out to be unrelated (after I'd debugged the linker error and got it to compile ... typical!)

[jgrenon]

ok that’s good. To keep things going while we find a better fix, I’ve added a post-install script in package.json that execute your workaround after each npm install automatically. Let’s keep this script until we find a real solution.

I didn’t have this problem on my Windows btw. The app was very long to start though, which might be another issue. I’ll look into it when I have spare time.

thanks!
Joel

On Thursday, February 13, 2014 at 15:12, Tom Lawton wrote:

Ok, here's the fix.
CD to src\node_modules\mongoose\node_modules\mongodb\node_modules\bson
Execute nw-gyp clean && nw-gyp configure --target=0.8.4 && nw-gyp build
The app should boot OK.

It's a bit of a hassle having to perform this step on every npm install. I don't have much experience with NPM / *-gyp so can't really offer a permanent solution aside from including the above steps in the readme. But that's a last resort IMO.
The kerberos compilation issue turned out to be unrelated (after I'd debugged the linker error and got it to compile ... typical!)

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub (#9 (comment)).

[jgrenon]

I haven’t test the script on windows… maybe you’ll have to fine-tune a bit to get this running… I’ve used bash she-bang approach which will definitely not run on Windows.

On Thursday, February 13, 2014 at 15:37, Joel Grenon wrote:

ok that’s good. To keep things going while we find a better fix, I’ve added a post-install script in package.json that execute your workaround after each npm install automatically. Let’s keep this script until we find a real solution.

I didn’t have this problem on my Windows btw. The app was very long to start though, which might be another issue. I’ll look into it when I have spare time.

thanks!
Joel

On Thursday, February 13, 2014 at 15:12, Tom Lawton wrote:

Ok, here's the fix.
CD to src\node_modules\mongoose\node_modules\mongodb\node_modules\bson
Execute nw-gyp clean && nw-gyp configure --target=0.8.4 && nw-gyp build
The app should boot OK.

It's a bit of a hassle having to perform this step on every npm install. I don't have much experience with NPM / *-gyp so can't really offer a permanent solution aside from including the above steps in the readme. But that's a last resort IMO.
The kerberos compilation issue turned out to be unrelated (after I'd debugged the linker error and got it to compile ... typical!)

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub (#9 (comment)).

[talss89]

Great - thanks! The script executes perfectly, and seems to do exactly what I did earlier to get node-webkit to run.

Unfortunately, the problem is still there as it was.

Anyway, I just applied my patch for kerberos to your updated master, ran nw-gyp over that, copied the bson.node binary into ext/ and node-webkit is back.

I've managed to pull 3 fresh copies and use the following process to get them working, so I'm assuming this is the actual fix end to end:

• npm install && grunt install
• (The nw-gyp npm hook is still required - it rebuilds bson)
• cd ./src/node_modules/mongoose/node_modules/mongodb/node_modules/bson
• Copy the ./build/Release/bson.node binary (which has just been freshly built) to ./ext/win32/ia32/bson.node. Overwrite it.
• cd ../../../../kerberos
• Edit ./lib/win32/wrappers/security_context.cc, and comment out line 4, to read // #include <v8.h>
• Back in the kerberos directory, run the usual suspect: nw-gyp clean && nw-gyp configure --target=0.8.4 && nw-gyp build

I'm not sure on the differences between node-gyp and nw-gyp, but node-gyp compiles the unmodified kerberos source (0.0.3) fine, whereas nw-gyp does not, and cries about a linker error.

The linker error is being caused by the V8 headers being included twice. Something in the difference between node-gyp and nw-gyp is causing two copies of the headers being linked. Usually I would think this is because the header guards can't take into account #defines from other objects, which may or may not be linked, but I expected the behaviour to be the same between nw-gyp and node-gyp. Which has left me scratching my head.

[talss89]

Sorry to keep posting - but just realised two things: a) this is a nw-gyp / kerberos issue and better off raised with them (duh...) and b) The V8 header linker problem is due to node-webkit using a modified version of the V8 headers.

It's late, so I'll raise this tomorrow with nw-gyp or mongodb/kerberos.

Thanks,

Tom.