Cross platform packaging

[maziac]

Hi,

from what I found so far in the Issues it seems that this could be doable but I'm lacking a clear documentation/guide how to do it.

When I build on macOS and build a package only the native code for macOS is installed. If someone uses the SW on a Windows machine the binaries are not there.

With bindings, prebuilt packages and/or prebuildify I think it should work somehow. If someone could give me some guidance that would be great.

My ultimate goal here is to create a vscode extension that includes native packages so that serial port could be utilized on Windows, mac and Linux. But building/pacakging is done only on a macOs system.

[reconbot]

Since version 10 we ship all binaries for all platforms in the npm package via prebuildify.

[maziac]

Is there a description how to use that?

[reconbot]

I have no idea how to package a vscode extension but if you look in the @serialport/bindings-cpp node modules folder you'll see the binaries for all platforms.

[maziac]

OK. I managed to package for vscode. It was very simple. Basically I had to do nothing special, it just worked.

I had tried that exercise some time ago (about 2 years). At that time it was really horrible.
I remember that one problem was that vscode uses a special electron version and if that is not the same as the one of serialport one would run into problems.

I found the article describing it: https://cultivatehq.com/posts/how-we-built-a-visual-studio-code-extension-for-iot-prototyping/

Does this problem still exist or would it be gone with the prebuilt binaries?

[reconbot]

With v10 we switched to napi so it's not a problem (if I understand what you're referring to)

https://serialport.io/docs/guide-upgrade#upgrading-from-9x-to-10x

https://opencollective.com/serialport/updates/serialport-v10-has-been-released

[maziac]

Thanks.