zmq for everyone

[rgbkrk]

In order to connect to any Jupyter kernel, they rely on zmq for reliable interprocess communication. The node bindings, which are quite stable (and awesome), are a bit persnickety to install on some platforms (as with anything relying on native bindings to C). In order for a developer to build, e.g., an Electron app that relies on zmq, they tend to need these items:

• zmq headers
• (optionally) libsodium for encryption TweetNACL is built in now!
• C compiler
• pkg-config
• for every version of Electron and node that come out, these need to be rebuilt
• rebuild for each version

Releasing multiplatform precompiled binaries for node modules is completely doable, though care has to be taken to allow users to use their local version of libzmq + libsodium as well.

If you dig through issues on zmq, you'll find quite a few about installation issues. Currently there are bundled Windows binaries in the repository for libzmq (for linking against).

[max-mapper]

I recommend https://github.com/mafintosh/prebuild for the binaries part, it even has a feature to upload the binaries to GitHub Releases for you

[rgbkrk]

Awesome. Do you think I should just create a zmq-prebuilt for now, similar to electron-prebuilt?

[okdistribute]

Seems like a good idea

[rgbkrk]

Seems like I'll need Electron support in prebuild: prebuild/prebuild#61

For now I've submitted a PR to zmq relying on node-pre-gyp (JustinTulloss/zeromq.node#486), now that node-pre-gyp supports Electron directly.

[captainsafia]

I think this can be closed now?

[rgbkrk]

Now that zmq-prebuilt exists (though not finished), yes!

[rgbkrk]

Re-opening until we fully resolve this for nteract/nteract. We made a release with a built binary for some platforms, yet it requires that you still have zmq headers installed.

[jdfreder]

😲

[rgbkrk]

Current pre-built status:

[lgeiger]

I tested zmq on windows with nteract and can manually reproduce this error.

It turns out zmq has to be built with electron headers on windows even for electron < 1.1.3 to make it work.

[rgbkrk]

and so it is, we must trudge these waters of electron builds for the future of all of us

[lgeiger]

Status on windows:
Still no prebuilts for electron but working if you build from source: #903

[rgbkrk]

@lgeiger has totally demolished this issue - from incredible cross-platform work in zmq-prebuilt, to creating zmq-static, and upstream fixes in zeromq.node.

We even have Windows builds now. 😄 😱

Closing this issue with much appreciation.

[lgeiger]

@rgbkrk Since the fallback is now working in zmq-prebuilt, what should we do with zmq-static?
I think zmq-prebuilt is now superior in every way.

I didn't expect to get it working at the time of creating zmq-static 😄 .

[rgbkrk]

Leave a deprecation notice in zmq-static, pointing to zmq-prebuilt. You apparently stirred a little bit of buzz by creating zmq-static, and if people found that over zmq-prebuilt we should at least do the service of redirecting it.

[lgeiger]

Great to see some people checking it out! I'll leave a notice.

[rgbkrk]

One way to "deprecate" while being backwards compatible is to make zmq-static's index.js be:

module.exports = require('zmq-prebuilt')

(while also noting they should use zmq-prebuilt instead)

[lgeiger]

I think we can leave it as is for people who really want to keep using VS 2013.

[rgbkrk]

Ah, ok, that works.

[lock]

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