Cannot use node.js file descriptors in addon on windows (EBADF)

[insidiator]

I am not sure if this is the correct place for my issue, so please forgive me if it turns out to be unrelated to node-gyp :)

I tried to use the node-fs-ext plugin (https://github.com/baudehlo/node-fs-ext) on windows, but it does not work, because file descriptors that come from the node.js filesystem functions are not recognized.

I added a function that opens a file to the plugin to test if something is wrong with the plugin itself, but the file pointers that I create inside the plugin work fine.
Conversely the pointers returned by my function do not work with the standard node.js functions.

After a lot of googling and trying things, I found a somewhat similar problem here http://osdir.com/ml/python.ctypes/2006-06/msg00087.html thus I suspect that there is some kind of mismatch between the runtime libraries in use.

As I am not a C++ developer I am not really sure what I can do about that, so I would be really grateful if somebody could point me in the right direction.

My setup:
Windows 7 x64
Windows SDK v7.1
Python 2.7.5
node-gyp@0.10.10
node@0.10.20 | win32 | x64

[JayBeavers]

It's pretty hard to understand the issue you are seeing, you didn't include the log of the failures. Could you please provide repro steps (e.g. npm install node-fs-ext) and the full log in this bug?

[stefan-guggisberg]

i ran into the same issue :( the problem occurs when passing CRT (c runtime library) objects (such as file descriptors) from node to a native addon on windows.

e.g.

fs.open(pathToFile, 'r'. function (err, fd) {
  binding.doSomething(fd, function (err, ...) {});   
});

won't work on windows unless both node.exe and the addon are linked dynamically to MSVCRT (/MD).
since node.exe is linked statically to MSVCRT (at least AFAICT) you're out of luck.

you can find more information here.

it's clearly not a node-gyp issue but rather a windows, erm, "limitation".

[JCMais]

Is that something we should still be aware? Or it was in someway fixed?

[davedoesdev]

This is still an issue (encountered it in fs-ext) but difficult to see a solution.

[bnoordhuis]

I'll close the report, it's not a node-gyp issue. Maybe it should be reported against nodejs/node, although I don't see a short-term solution.

[davedoesdev]

FYI Issue is now fixed (see nodejs/node#6369)