A *plea* to include binary API required by socket.io into NodeJS core.

[tohagan]

The Problem

There is unending pain on Windows for anyone attempting to use the beloved socket.io library. This is rooted in the fact that you're forced to perform a compile and worse in a SDK (Visual Studio 2010) most Windows devs ditched some years ago. You can kinda/maybe/possibly hack around it if you have admin privs and a lots of Window experience but basically any app that dares to use this wonderful lib is in for a ton of support issues and pain and most end users won't be able to get it working.

Just google search for "win7 nodejs socket.io" and feel the pain out there.

Today I'm hitting this issue yet again as I'm trying to use a new PhoneGap component that would be very cool with remote logging if not for this ten pound gorilla standing in my path.

It's not just Windows that experiences this pain. Other platforms also suffer but for me today it's another Windows issue and this is a recurring nightmare for anyone doing node on Windows.

The Solution

IMHO I think the right solution is to remove the need for compiling for what I think is now a frequently used CORE feature of node by adding the API required by socket.io into the node core code. So the fix then just just a Node upgrade rather than a two day torture test.

The Plea

Socket.io is FAB! It opens tons of cool trick doors for node. Please remove the pain. All the node community will rejoice.

[tohagan]

FYI ... I'm using node 0.10.29

[TooTallNate]

socket.io's only native dependency is ws, which actually has an optional compilation step that falls back to a vanilla JavaScript implementation if compilation fails.

That said, the compiled portion of socket.io is optional and only benefits speed in the end. Where are you getting hung up exactly?

[bnoordhuis]

I think what @tohagan is complaining about is that gyp / node-gyp defaults to VS 2010 when auto-detection fails and GYP_MSVS_VERSION isn't set in the environment. (Upstream gyp defaults to 2012 now, by the way.)

@tohagan You can set e.g. GYP_MSVS_VERSION=2012 or GYP_MSVS_VERSION=2013e (the 'e' stands for 'express edition') to pick a particular version of VS. See https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/v0.10.29/tools/gyp/pylib/gyp/MSVSVersion.py#L209-294 for the full list.

[TooTallNate]

I'll look into updating gyp in node-gyp ASAP.

[tohagan]

Yes .. As a developer with many years experience I can probably dodge this bullet and follow instructions on stackoverflow or here but the fact remains is that large numbers of end users of node apps and libs cannot. Yes I'm aware that ws is the problem. So I'm pleading that you include it into CORE so we can avoid the compiler issue and keep sockets fast.

There are tons of great node libs and apps that are simply very painful to deploy on Windows because of this issue and this pain has now subsisted for many months. Hacking the environment does not fix it for non tech users. Please realise that Node is now maturing and that it need to be "turn key" installed for all users - not just developers. That's the very cool dream of npm.

ws is a wonderful and essential part of NodeJS but because of the serious and constant pain this module creates for Windows deployment, I'm lobbying that it become part of NodeJS CORE library so we can finally bury the need to be compiling anything.

So .. I'm pleading ... Can you please team up with the ws team so we can all rest easy at night knowing we won't have to face another request to install VS 2010 or any other developer tool in the morning.

The fact is that now many NodeJS end users who install our node apps ...
(a) Don't have admin privs on Windows
(b) Don't have the technical expertise to dodge the ws bullet.
(c) Are Not developers
(d) Are Not Visual Studio developers
(e) Ditched Visual Studio 2010 long ago

However, these end users typically can download and install the next release of NodeJS. So I think ws and NodeJS CORE belong together - precompiled for each platform so we can forget this nightmare.

Just do a Google search for "win7 nodejs socket.io" and you'll get the idea.

[mwbrooks]

+1 Win7 support for socket.io would be incredibly helpful. Thanks for opening this discussion @tohagan!

[bnoordhuis]

You know, incorporating ws kind of makes sense in a twisted way. Websockets are a common enough use case that it makes a reasonable core addition.

[TooTallNate]

None of this addresses the fact that ws falls back to JavaScript implementations of the modules, and thus native compilation is not a requirement.

So I ask again, what is really the issue? Where are you being prevented from using socket.io?

If you do npm install socket.io, and the native compilation part fails, then socket.io should still be installed and doing require('socket.io') in a script at that point should still work. Is this not the case?

[tohagan]

Thanks @TooTallNate ... I will retest this. If it does work then perhaps the failure message on install need to switch to being a warning somehow (not simple I suspect).

Another longer term solution for Node might be to ship the GNU gcc compiler as part of Windows NodeJS so we get a more uniform compiling environment that no one needs to install separately. Perhaps it becomes part of gyp/ node-gyp. I realise that for Windows coders, VS is much better supported.

Might even be able to auto download / install mingw's port of gcc as part of the install process. Not sure if their licence will allow this. Might need to chat with them first.
http://www.mingw.org/

IMHO I still think ws belongs in CORE even with this.

[Qard]

+1 on core support for websockets.

On a side note, including ws in core doesn't solve the native compilation issue for any of the other many native modules out there. The proposed solution does not solve the actual problem, which is that compiling native modules on Windows just sucks. With Google switching to gn, the future of gyp is a bit unknown--perhaps the state of native modules on Windows will improve as we work through the deprecation of gyp.

[tohagan]

I managed to get past the issue for myself by setting GYP_MSVS_VERSION to 2012. Thanks!

[rlidwka]

Why do you even have to use it on native Windows? Just develop it using vagrant or something like that.

[dougwilson]

Another longer term solution for Node might be to ship the GNU gcc compiler as part of Windows NodeJS so we get a more uniform compiling environment that no one needs to install separately

FWIW, this is what the Perl community does for Perl on Windows (Strawberry Perl distribution).