How do you force prebuild-install to NOT compile from source/ALWAYS download prebuild binaries?

[prebuild]

How do you force prebuild-install to NOT compile from source/ALWAYS download prebuild binaries?

[vweevers]

The "skipping download" thing is a feature used for when developing modules. But in your case this feature gets in your way since you are actually using git: or file: based dependencies and you will basically never get any prebuilts.

This case also falls under "development". A git based dependency is mutable, so it can't have prebuilds.

Why don't you make a PR to make https://github.com/santigimeno/node-pcsclite prebuild ready? Maybe you can convince him that using prebuild is a cool thing? :)

👍

[mathiask88]

If a binary is available prebuild-install will always use it. Compiling from source is fallback only on user side. Do you have an example?

[ian-axiadids]

Sorry, yes. To clarify, I am attempting to use prebuild while installing a node module from a Git(Hub) repository instead of NPM. If I do not install the module directly from NPM (the original module does not provide prebuilt binaries) then I receive a line like the following:

> prebuild-install || node-gyp rebuild

prebuild-install info begin Prebuild-install version 2.3.0
prebuild-install info install installing from git repository, skipping download.

I have not found any way to force the use of prebuilt binaries, despite both trying with binaries commited in prebuilds and with prebuild's native prebuild -u <token> GitHub release upload. If there is a way to do so already, we can update the documentation to make this clearer.

Just to clarify, the module is included as a dependency under git+<repository>/file:<path>, but both methods cause it to skip retrieval of the (most certainly available) prebuilt binaries.

[ralphtheninja]

I think I know what you mean now. The "skipping download" thing is a feature used for when developing modules. But in your case this feature gets in your way since you are actually using git: or file: based dependencies and you will basically never get any prebuilts. Correct?

[mathiask88]

Why don't you make a PR to make https://github.com/santigimeno/node-pcsclite prebuild ready? Maybe you can convince him that using prebuild is a cool thing? :)

[mathiask88]

This case also falls under "development". A git based dependency is mutable, so it can't have prebuilds.

True.. The only thing we could do is to check if the github url is a tagged one and search the releases for that tagged version?!

[ian-axiadids]

I think I know what you mean now. The "skipping download" thing is a feature used for when developing modules. But in your case this feature gets in your way since you are actually using git: or file: based dependencies and you will basically never get any prebuilts. Correct?

This is correct.

Why don't you make a PR to make https://github.com/santigimeno/node-pcsclite prebuild ready? Maybe you can convince him that using prebuild is a cool thing? :)

Strange, I don't recall mentioning that module? ;)

Unfortunately, that would only solve our most obvious issue: getting the module itself loaded. We have a multi-stage build process for a cross-platform app that, ideally, should only have to be run on a Linux machine. Amongst various other issues, we want to make certain we're using our QA-tested binaries.

This case also falls under "development". A git based dependency is mutable, so it can't have prebuilds.

True.. The only thing we could do is to check if the github url is a tagged one and search the releases for that tagged version?!

I don't think changing the default behavior here is worth the effort; instead, I would propose a new flag that forces prebuild-install to ignore those checks. If accidental developer misuse is a worry, we could add warnings to alert the developer.

The code looks simple enough to modify. If there's not an existing method to do this, then I'll work on a pull request to add this functionality? :)

[ralphtheninja]

The code looks simple enough to modify. If there's not an existing method to do this, then I'll work on a pull request to add this functionality? :)

👍

[ian-axiadids]

@ralphtheninja The PR has been made when you have the chance to review it.

[ralphtheninja]

@ian-axiadids Yep, just noticed it! Fixing borked travis first.