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Node Interactive Code & Learn issues on Windows #16278

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@digitalinfinity

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@digitalinfinity
  • Version: Node 9
  • Platform: Windows
  • Subsystem: build

During Code & Learn at Node Interactive North America, @mike-kaufman, @rachelnicole and others observed several issues by folks building and testing with Node Core on Windows. I wanted to open this issue to capture them and also maybe use this as a discussion point for other improvements.

vcbuild improvements

Lots of folks ran into issues that could have probably been improved by doing a small amount of validation and messaging in vcbuild. Common issues were that folks did not have the right version of python, msys2 or other dependencies in the path. Additionally, a couple folks ran into really slow build times because Windows Defender was turned on and did not have the right exclusions set.
Recommendation: Introduce an opinionated developer shell for Node on Windows that validates system configuration and dependency installations and configures the paths correctly

VS installation

Lots of folks thought they had Visual C++ installed but didn't since the VS Setup is confusing. While that feedback will be communicated back to the VS team, we could probably do better by making it easier to get the build tools.
Recommendation: Update the Windows build guide to point to https://www.npmjs.com/package/windows-build-tools/ as a mechanism for setting up the build. We can certainly point folks at Code & Learn to following those steps.

Other issues

  • A couple folks had build failures because zconf.h got renamed- git checkout -- fixed the issue but I don't know what the repro steps were that got them to that point. Calling it out here in case it rings a bell for anyone.
  • Someone ran into test flakiness in test\addons-napi\test_promise. This might have been fixed by Fix race condition bug in test, and show assertion failure values #16037

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    buildIssues and PRs related to build files or the CI.code-and-learnIssues related to the Code-and-Learn events and PRs submitted during the events.metaIssues and PRs related to the general management of the project.windowsIssues and PRs related to the Windows platform.

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