Pull from icu4c github release instead of package

[srl295]

See ICU-20600 for the ICU side. Consider pulling the little endian data directly from the ICU src file (https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/releases/download/release-64-2/icu4c-64_2-src.tgz). BE and EBCDIC could pull from an adjunct data file also published by ICU. This would break the dependency on the manual step of (me) remembering to upload the ICU data.

This also would make sure the dot-release issue mentioned in #35 does not occur, because fetching would be specific to the ICU dot release.

Also, npm install in postinstall is a bad idea, as #38 points out.

[srl295]

• Downside: unable to leverage npm package caching, proxies, etc. However, ICU releases are on github (with its CDN) instead of a single icu-project server these days.

• Upside: is no more manually having to publish packages to icu4c-data@latest for each ICU release.

• Other Upside: is to no longer have this odd package that installs another package, breaking dependency analysis and the package install model in general.

[srl295]

If it's not a package, this functionality (the fetch) could move into core… into configure.py… into the node installer (check this box to download full ICU)…?

[richardlau]

Sounds good. Will this just be for future versions of ICU or will the data files be retroactively published by the ICU project?

[srl295]

@richardlau maybe retroactively publish for current ICU 64.2 — that's going to be what Node LTS v10 uses soon enough. But not all versions. Actually, for little endian non-EBCDIC, the data file is already in the .src.tgz and so several versions back are already available.

[caub]

What should we do with this https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/releases/download/release-64-2/icu4c-64_2-src.tgz? should it be saved/uncompressed in a specific directory?

we were using full-icu in https://github.com/brigand/jellobot/blob/master/src/plugins/js-eval/Dockerfile, but recently it stopped working since node v11.8.0 or a little before

[srl295]

https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/releases/download/release-64-2/icu4c-64_2-src.tgz

If you're on little endian, then pull out icu/source/data/in/icudt*l.dat from that zip and copy it to a directory specified in NODE_ICU_DATA (env variable) or --icu-data-dir=… (node parameter) … see https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/doc/api/intl.md#providing-icu-data-at-runtime

if you're on big endian you need to build ICU and convert the data.

recently it stopped working

can you clarify? what stopped working?

[caub]

Oh sorry, it's working

docker run --rm node:slim bash -c "npm i full-icu; NODE_ICU_DATA='node_modules/full-icu' node -p 'new Intl.DateTimeFormat(\"fr-FR\", {dateStyle:\"full\"}).format(new Date())'"

vendredi 30 août 2019

thanks, nvm

[srl295]

in light of nodejs/node#29522 I think ICU4C 65.1 is a good cutover time to start this new approach. This means no more updates to the icu4c-data repo.