The solution of lacking libudev.so.0

The following solution is provided in the same way as Google Chrome is used in their product:

Due to the removal of `libudev0` and its associated library `libudev.so.0`, node-webkit isn’t able to run on newer distributions such as:

• Ubuntu 13.04+
• Fedora 18+
• Arch
• Gentoo
• Derivatives of the above

…and possibly others. Until node-webkit is updated to depend on the currently shipped version `libudev.so.1`, the following solutions should provide a stopgap measure for packaging your applications.

1. Create local symlink to `libudev.so.1`

Same as above install `libudev1` if needed. Now create a local symlink to `libudev.so.1`. On Ubuntu for example, run from the directory where nw files are extracted:

# ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1 ./libudev.so.0

Then create a shell script to run nw:

#!/bin/sh
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/omi/nw:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH ./nw $*

As you are only modifying local contents of node-webkit directory, this option should not have an impact on the overall stability of your system.

2. Use a wrapper shell script for your application.
In this method, we rename the binary executable file as `myapp-bin`, and then create a shell script named `myapp` as the following. Users run the `myapp` file.

#!/bin/bash
export MYAPP_WRAPPER="`readlink -f "$0"`"

HERE="`dirname "$MYAPP_WRAPPER"`"

# Always use our versions of ffmpeg libs.
# This also makes RPMs find the compatibly-named library symlinks.
if [[ -n "$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" ]]; then
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HERE:$HERE/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
else
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HERE:$HERE/lib"
fi
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

exec -a "$0" "$HERE/myapp-bin"  "$@"

Creating a symlink for your package in the postinstall script

In the postinstall script of your DEB or RPM package, run the following script to create a local symlink. Use this together with the previous wrapper script.

#!/bin/bash
paths=(
  "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1" # Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Mint
  "/usr/lib64/libudev.so.1" # SUSE, Fedora
  "/usr/lib/libudev.so.1" # Arch, Fedora 32bit
  "/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1" # Ubuntu 32bit
)
for i in "${paths[@]}"
do
  if [ -f $i ]
  then
    ln -sf "$i" /opt/myapp/libudev.so.0
    break
  fi
done

3. Modify the nw binary itself

In this method, we navigate (via command line) to the directory containing the nw binary and run the following:

sed -i 's/\x75\x64\x65\x76\x2E\x73\x6F\x2E\x30/\x75\x64\x65\x76\x2E\x73\x6F\x2E\x31/g' nw

As should be obvious, this method comes with increased risk of damaging the nw executable and should only be attempted by skilled users which understand what the command is doing.