Revamp build mechanism

[am11]

It involves, lib/build.js and scripts/republish.

Current behavior

For contributor:

When we do npm install, it:

• downloads dependencies.
• tests the current binary exits and if it passes few tests, it skips the build process and continues. Otherwise:
• builds binary and copies into bin/<os-name>-<architecture>/binding.node
• clones into node-sass-binaries
• copies binaries of every OS into bin
  • then it overwrites the binary it just built using build.js script..

For consumers (via nodejs.org):

• downloads dependencies.
• copies binaries of every OS into bin
• tests the current binary exists and passes few tests, it skips the build process and continue. Otherwise:
• builds binary and copies into bin/<os-name>-<architecture>/binding.node

Preferred behavior

For contributor:

It should:

• download dependencies.
• test the current binary, if it passes few tests, it skips the build process and continue. Otherwise:
• build binary and copy into bin/<os-name>-<architecture>/binding.node

For consumer (via nodejs.org):

It should:

• download dependencies.
• copy only the required binary into bin and remove others from the disk.
• test the current binary passes few tests; skip the build process and continue. Otherwise:
• build binary (if python, C++ compilers and other tools are present) and copy into bin/<os-name>-<architecture>/binding.node

[nschonni]

copy only the required binary into bin and remove others from the disk.

I get this from the "keep it clean" point of view, but for those that actually check node_modules into their builds would then break for teams working on more than a single OS or platform. I don't think the benefit of a slightly smaller node_modules directory is worth it.

[nschonni]

We may be able to abuse the GitHub repo (sorry @andrew 👅 ) with https://github.com/mapbox/node-pre-gyp
The difference with that approach is that it never ships with a binary (similar to what @kevva uses in imagemin), which means the entire lookup flow is different

[andrew]

I wonder if @ErisDS can shed some light on how pre-gyp is working for the ghost team?

[ErisDS]

I ❤️ pre-gyp so much. It has unquestionably completely solved the biggest install problem we had with Ghost, the only time people have issues with sqlite3 now is if they're on a system so obscure there's no binary available AND no the system is missing build tools - which is quite rare - and people in that situation usually have the savvy to resolve the problem.

As proof this isn't just hyperbole, check out our installation forum. Go back to the first pages and the majority of issues are with people getting stuck on the npm install step where installing sqlite3 would fail for a number of varied reasons. Take a look at the more recent pages, there are no sqlite3 issues in sight :)