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node-api-dotnet Development Notes

Requirements for Development

While node-api-dotnet supports .NET 6 or .NET Framework 4 at runtime, .NET 8 or later SDK is required for building the AOT components.

Build

dotnet build

While developing the source generator, set DOTNET_CLI_USE_MSBUILD_SERVER=0 to prevent MSBuild from re-using a previously-loaded (possibly outdated) version of the source generator assembly. (See Shut down or disable MSBuild Server.)

Build Packages

dotnet pack

This produces both nuget and npm packages (for the current platform only) in the out/pkg directory. It uses Debug configuration by default, which is slower but allows for debugging. Append -c Relase to change the configuration.

Test

dotnet pack
dotnet test

Some tests reference the source-generator via the local nuget package; hence it is required to run dotnet pack before the first time running tests, or after any changes to the generator code. This is unavoidable because the source-generator must run with at least .NET 6, so referencing it via a <ProjectReference> would not work for .NET 4 testing because project references always use the same target framework version.

Use --framework to specify a target framework, or --filter to run a subset of test cases:

dotnet test --framework net8.0 --filter "DisplayName~aot"

The list of test cases is automatically derived from the set of .js files under the Test/TestCases directory. Within each subdirectory there, all .cs files are compiled into one assembly, then all .js test files execute against the assembly.

Most test cases run twice, once for "hosted" CLR mode and once for AOT ahead-of-time compiled mode with no CLR.

Test a Private Build in another project

A project typically consumes the Microsoft.JavaScript.NodeApi packages from nuget.org. Use these steps to set up a project to use a local build of the packages instead:

  1. Build nuget packages with dotnet pack.
  2. Note the version of the packages produced. If building from branch other than main the package version may include a git commit hash.
  3. Add the package output directory to <packageSources> in your project's NuGet.config file, before the nuget.org package source. It should look like this. (Replace /path/to-/node-api-dotnet with the correct relative or absolute path on your system.)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <packageSources>
    <clear />
    <add key="local" value="/path/to/node-api-dotnet/out/pkg" />
    <add key="nuget.org" value="https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json" />
  </packageSources>
  <disabledPackageSources>
    <clear />
  </disabledPackageSources>
</configuration>
  1. In your .csproj or Directory.Packages.props file, update <PackageReference> elements to reference the version of the packages that you built locally. Include the git commit hash suffix, if applicable. For example:
  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.JavaScript.NodeApi" Version="0.4.31-g424705b2aa" />
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.JavaScript.NodeApi.Generator" Version="0.4.31-g424705b2aa" />
  </ItemGroup>
  1. Stop the .NET build server to ensure it doesn't continue using a previous version of the generator assembly:
dotnet build-server shutdown

Debugging

With a debug build, the following environment variables trigger just-in-time debugging of the respective components:

  • NODE_API_DEBUG_GENERATOR=1 - Debug the C# source-generator or TS type-definitions generator when they run during the build.
  • NODE_API_DEBUG_RUNTIME=1 - Debug the .NET runtime host when it is loaded by JavaScript. (Does not apply to AOT-compiled modules.)

Setting either of these variables to 1 causes the program to print a message to the console at startup and wait (with 20s countdown) for a debugger to attach:

###################### DEBUG ######################
Process "node" (21864) is waiting for debugger.
Press any key to continue without debugging... (20)

Set to the string vs to use the VS JIT Debug dialog instead. (Requires Windows and a Visual Studio installation.)

Tracing

The following environment variables trigger verbose tracing to the console:

  • NODE_API_TRACE_HOST - Trace messages about starting the native host and managed host and dynanically exporting .NET types from the managed host to JS.
  • NODE_API_TRACE_RUNTIME - Trace all calls and callbacks across the JS/.NET boundary. Tracing works with both debug and release builds.

Check/fix formatting

PR builds will fail if formatting does not comply with settings in .editorconfig.

dotnet format --severity info --verbosity detailed

Benchmarks

There are a lot of micro-benchmarks to measure low-level .NET/JS interop operations. See bench/README.md for details.

Roadmap

We track major feature work on the project board: node-api-dotnet tasks