1.8 KiB
Packaging
Currently, the node packaging/compiling world has gotten a lot more complicated if you want to generate a single binary. Creating a NPM package is easy and you can easily upload it. But what if you don't want your users to install node and use the command line to install your package?
Bundle node
Currently, the easiest way is to simply download a node binary for your platform, extract it, and copy it into your project root. Then create a shortcut/script to execute that.
Make sure you have babel transpile it, in case you use any new syntax not supported by your current version of node.
The above is explained more in detail below.
package.json
"scripts": {
"start": "node_modules/.bin/babel-node index.js",
"build": "node_modules/.bin/babel index.js -d bin/",
}
(Babel also supports entire directories by just specifying the directories instead.)
- And then build it:
npm run build.
Linux + Mac
root
- bin
- index.js
- package.json
- node # This is the unzipped downloaded binary that you downloaded
- start
- And then script contains:
#!/bin/sh
./node bin/index.js
- You can then compress that into a zip file, or package it into a deb file etc. Just keep the relative file structure the same.
Windows
- On Windows, you can make a shortcut to
node.exe, and edit the target for it to execute the file.
.
- Then you can make it a zip file, or create a installer using something like NSIS.
nexe (currently not working)
Nexe allows you to build a node project into a single exe, however currently the native module capability is broken. I am including this here in case it works sometime in the future.
npm i -g nexe
nexe bin/index.js