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Solution for running/packaging native modules for Electron #55

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Solution for running/packaging native modules for Electron#55

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@jondo2010
jondo2010
opened on Feb 2, 2018

While attempting to integrate my Electron app using rules_node, I've run into a roadblock with dependent modules that have a native build portion, in particular grpc.

At first I thought I could patch the call to yarn with some flag telling it to "build/install for Electron", which would result in a yarn_modules repository specifically built for Electron, but it seems this is not possible.

Do you have any ideas about how this could be implemented?

Activity

  1. pcj commented on Feb 2, 2018

    @pcj
    pcj
    on Feb 2, 2018
    Contributor

    Hi @jondo2010 not sure I'm understanding the problem yet. You're not able to use grpc as a yarn dependency? If you can put together a minimal example repo with grpc/electron to iterate on that would be helpful. I'd like to get this working.

  2. pcj commented on Feb 2, 2018

    @pcj
    pcj
    on Feb 2, 2018
    Contributor

    Maybe grpc/grpc#8887 is related.

  3. jondo2010 commented on Feb 3, 2018

    @jondo2010
    jondo2010
    on Feb 3, 2018
    Author

    Hi @pcj, awesome that you're keen to support! I put together a minimal example here

    With the sample output below, you can see that there is a mismatch with the gRPC binary module portion. It needs to be compiled against the correct version of Electron, and this is different than what yarn installs.

    $ bazel run '//:test_bin'
INFO: Analysed target //:test_bin (2 packages loaded).
INFO: Found 1 target...
Target //:test_bin up-to-date:
  bazel-bin/test_bin
INFO: Elapsed time: 73.412s, Critical Path: 4.63s
INFO: Build completed successfully, 5922 total actions

INFO: Running command line: bazel-bin/test_bin
stderr: App threw an error during load

stderr: Error: Failed to load gRPC binary module because it was not installed for the current system
Expected directory: electron-v1.8-linux-x64-glibc
Found: [node-v59-linux-x64-glibc]
This problem can often be fixed by running "npm rebuild" on the current system
Original error: Cannot find module '/home/john/.cache/bazel/_bazel_john/8afb8bb0ba5daba4f60180e50fbdc72a/execroot/rules_node_grpc_electron/bazel-out/k8-fastbuild/bin/test_bin_files/node_modules/grpc/src/node/extension_binary/electron-v1.8-linux-x64-glibc/grpc_node.node'
    at Object.<anonymous> (/home/john/.cache/bazel/_bazel_john/8afb8bb0ba5daba4f60180e50fbdc72a/execroot/rules_node_grpc_electron/bazel-out/k8-fastbuild/bin/test_bin_files/node_modules/grpc/src/grpc_extension.js:44:17)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/home/john/.cache/bazel/_bazel_john/8afb8bb0ba5daba4f60180e50fbdc72a/execroot/rules_node_grpc_electron/bazel-out/k8-fastbuild/bin/test_bin_files/node_modules/grpc/src/grpc_extension.js:54:3)
    at Module._compile (module.js:569:30)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:580:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:503:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (module.js:466:12)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:458:3)
    at Module.require (module.js:513:17)
    at require (internal/module.js:11:18)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/home/john/.cache/bazel/_bazel_john/8afb8bb0ba5daba4f60180e50fbdc72a/execroot/rules_node_grpc_electron/bazel-out/k8-fastbuild/bin/test_bin_files/node_modules/grpc/src/client.js:38:12)
A JavaScript error occurred in the main process
Uncaught Exception:
Error: Failed to load gRPC binary module because it was not installed for the current system
Expected directory: electron-v1.8-linux-x64-glibc
Found: [node-v59-linux-x64-glibc]
This problem can often be fixed by running "npm rebuild" on the current system
Original error: Cannot find module '/home/john/.cache/bazel/_bazel_john/8afb8bb0ba5daba4f60180e50fbdc72a/execroot/rules_node_grpc_electron/bazel-out/k8-fastbuild/bin/test_bin_files/node_modules/grpc/src/node/extension_binary/electron-v1.8-linux-x64-glibc/grpc_node.node'
    at Object.<anonymous> (/home/john/.cache/bazel/_bazel_john/8afb8bb0ba5daba4f60180e50fbdc72a/execroot/rules_node_grpc_electron/bazel-out/k8-fastbuild/bin/test_bin_files/node_modules/grpc/src/grpc_extension.js:44:17)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/home/john/.cache/bazel/_bazel_john/8afb8bb0ba5daba4f60180e50fbdc72a/execroot/rules_node_grpc_electron/bazel-out/k8-fastbuild/bin/test_bin_files/node_modules/grpc/src/grpc_extension.js:54:3)
    at Module._compile (module.js:569:30)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:580:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:503:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (module.js:466:12)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:458:3)
    at Module.require (module.js:513:17)
    at require (internal/module.js:11:18)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/home/john/.cache/bazel/_bazel_john/8afb8bb0ba5daba4f60180e50fbdc72a/execroot/rules_node_grpc_electron/bazel-out/k8-fastbuild/bin/test_bin_files/node_modules/grpc/src/client.js:38:12)

  4. pcj commented on Feb 3, 2018

    @pcj
    pcj
    on Feb 3, 2018
    Contributor

    OK seeing same error. Electron alone seems to work. Uncertain if node version matters.

    Have you seen this working outside of bazel? (probably using electron-rebuild)

  5. pcj commented on Feb 3, 2018

    @pcj
    pcj
    on Feb 3, 2018
    Contributor

    OK I think I have this working. Here's what the yarn_modules rule looks like now:

    yarn_modules(
    name = "yarn_modules",
    deps = {
        "electron": "1.8.2-beta.4",
        "electron-rebuild": "1.7.3",
        "grpc": "^1.8.4"
    },
    post_install = ["{node}", "node_modules/electron-rebuild/lib/src/cli.js"],
)
    1. Need to require electron-rebuild
    2. Need to invoke a post-install command to rebuild native libs. The {node} pseudo-syntax will replace the actual path of the node exe bazel is using.

    Also, electron-rebuild pulls in rxjs, to which @gregmagolan added a BUILD.bazel file fairly recently (first time I've seen a bazel build file in an npm module!). This causes issues with package boundaries, so I added in a built-in post-install step to remove those from the installed node_modules tree.

    I'll push up a PR, let me know what you think.

  6. pcj
    added a commit that references this issue on Feb 3, 2018

    Add post_install argument to yarn_modules rule

    4ffd256

  7. alexeagle commented on Feb 3, 2018

    @alexeagle
    alexeagle
    on Feb 3, 2018

    If you just reference the rxjs directory as a workspace, it may resolve the issue since Bazel will no longer descend into the directory. But we'll also maybe run into incompatibility between the node just rules...

  8. pcj commented on Feb 3, 2018

    @pcj
    pcj
    on Feb 3, 2018
    Contributor

    Thanks @alexeagle that is a good point.

  9. jondo2010 commented on Feb 5, 2018

    @jondo2010
    jondo2010
    on Feb 5, 2018
    Author

    Awesome, this totally works! Thanks for the quick turnaround. I've discovered a few other small gotchas with node_binary that I'll post a PR up for as well.

  10. pcj
    closed this as completedin #56on Feb 12, 2018
  11. pcj
    added a commit that references this issue on Feb 12, 2018

    Add post_install argument to yarn_modules rule (#56)

    7674456
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