Native modules don't work on Windows

[nwjs]

Native modules don't work on Windows

[zcbenz]

It's a harder bug than I have thought, now we don't have symbols issues but we get crash when creating V8 values in native modules, which seems to be caused by different V8 versions used by node and node-webkit.

[pauliusuza]

any update on this?

[zcbenz]

I had tried to solve it last month, according to how node.js had done. After that I got no symbols not founding errors, but got stuck by mysterious assertion when creating V8 handles. Then I gave up because it's rather slow to build and to debug node-webkit on my Windows virtual machine.

I'll have a try again next week.

[rogerwang]

We would like to fix this before releasing 0.3.2

[pauliusuza]

thanks for the update, would be really useful to have this in 0.3.2

[rogerwang]

As we modified Node to use the version of V8 in chromium, the ABI is changed. And native module is built with node-gyp with the upstream Node, then the ABI breaks when the module is loaded.

We should provide the headers and the import library of our version to node-gyp in some convenient way.

[zcbenz]

I had tried to replace the V8 chromium uses with the node's one, but still got the same error, and if this is the reason then native modules on other platforms should all break.

[rogerwang]

Please use the chromium version of V8.

On linux and OSX the linking is different with windows, which need an import library. So the condition is different.

[rogerwang]

@zcbenz , third party native modules have to link with our Node, not upstream's. On Linux and OSX it might tolerant more in the ABI specification and didn't trigger the error, but we should look into it later and fix Windows first.

[rogerwang]

I just verified that if linking with our Node (nw.lib), the native module works well. So we'll place the dev files (nw.lib, nw.exp and headers) on our download server starting from the next release. We'll also see if node-gyp can use our files directly, or we'll provide a hacked version of node-gyp in npm.

[pauliusuza]

That's great, looking forward to the release.

[rogerwang]

fixed with a new tool https://github.com/rogerwang/nw-gyp. will be released with 0.3.2

[rogerwang]

Wiki: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/wiki/Build-native-modules-with-nw-gyp

[vinnitu]

I return to my app idea with ltx module, but still failed to run app :(
I have read about nw-gyp but something wrong with configure it :((
As I understand node-gyp must link ltx (expat) with custom nw.lib? or what is solution?

Sorry for my poor english.

[rogerwang]

I replied to you in your issue of nw-gyp project.

[vinnitu]

So thank you again! :)