

First "official" NodeJS build on Windows - spotirca
http://blog.nodejs.org/2011/07/14/node-v0-5-1/

======
binarymax
I absolutely love the fact that its just a single exe and not some bloated
install. I wish more win software was built like this.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Why? If you use someone else's library there's going to be a dll associated.
Node doesn't have any dependencies.

~~~
deskamess
Does a javascript engine like V8 have to be installed separately to avoid
dependency issues?

Microsoft has the Chakra engine but as far as I know it was running inside IE
only.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
V8 is open source, so it's compiled into Node. But I don't even compile open-
source libraries into my windows assemblies. That seems like an incredible
waste of time for little benefit.

~~~
sjs
The distribution & install story is better w/ a single statically linked exe
(imo of course). Not to mention installing node for development and on
servers. When everything is in one place it's just so easy.

I think the benefit is huge and don't see how it's a waste of time. Node is
linked to specific V8 versions, it makes sense to include it.

~~~
mathgladiator
Case in point: putty.exe

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christkv
Yeah there will be plenty off issues using npm. The native npm packages will
most likely break. Npm has support for binary builds but I'm not sure most
packages will have a completely separate build process set up for windows.

In the case of the mongodb package I'm deprecating the c++ bson parser as the
js parser is as fast or faster than the c++ bson parser (v8 crankshaft and
fast arrays rock) and this "should" make it work out of the box on the windows
node.js build (crossing fingers)

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statictype
This is great. That means both Node.js and Coffeescript should now be natively
available on Windows.

~~~
jackfoxy
Please explain how native Coffeescript is available on Windows. I haven't been
following that closely.

~~~
sjs
You can run a CoffeeScript repl using node.

~~~
jackfoxy
thx

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taylorbuley
That was quick! Wasn't this just announced in June?

[http://blog.nodejs.org/2011/06/23/porting-node-to-windows-
wi...](http://blog.nodejs.org/2011/06/23/porting-node-to-windows-with-
microsoft%E2%80%99s-help/)

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rbanffy
Unless you are deploying on Windows, why not run it under cygwin? You may end
up with a lot of silly problems with file paths, case insensitivity and any
other "impedance mismatch" between your development environment and whatever
server the workload will run on.

I did a lot of Django development on Windows and Cygwin saved me a whole lot
of pain.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I just tried to install node on cygwin and it failed with this error:

\------

src/uv-cygwin.c:33: error: ‘CLOCK_MONOTONIC’ undeclared (first use in this
function)

src/uv-cygwin.c:33: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once

src/uv-cygwin.c:33: error: for each function it appears in.)

make[1]: __* [src/uv-platform.o] Error 1

~~~
bnoordhuis
It's been fixed in master. 0.5.2 comes out tomorrow (if all goes well) and
will also contain the fix.

<https://github.com/joyent/libuv/issues/112> for details.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Thank you - that's great news. I'll keep an eye out for it.

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powertower
I/O Completion Ports abstraction is here: <https://github.com/joyent/libuv>

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wildmXranat
Just throwing it out there, but what is the real reason behind making it
windows friendly? Do developers want it or is it done with intentions to make
it more appealing for corporate absorption?

~~~
agnokapathetic
<http://nodejs.org/nodeconf.pdf>

With IO Completion Ports, the Windows kernel lends itself more to async server
programming than Unix threads, Microsoft has committed to Joyent's port and
with many developers working with Windows on their development boxes, even if
they later deploy to a Linux environment, a windows port just makes sense.

~~~
hkarthik
I shudder at the thought of writing Node apps in Windows only to later deploy
them to a Linux environment. Sounds like a debugging nightmare.

Didn't we learn these lessons from the early days of Java when it was "write
once, debug everywhere"?

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insraq
Still lots of bugs and many features are not supported. But it is good to know
they are working actively on this.

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mirrorskin
Did anyone manage to get npm up and running on Windows yet?

~~~
davej
No, there are still a number of issues with NPM support on windows. Isaacs
talks about them on the latest NodeUp podcast: <http://nodeup.com/>

~~~
xtian
Check out ryppi for bare-bones package installation, though:
<https://github.com/japj/ryppi>

