Re:Ubuntu on Windows
by itsananderson on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @04:22PM
(#11392664)
99% of the painful Node stuff on Windows comes down to native packages. To even compile, you have to install Visual Studio. Then you have to hope the module developer has a build definition that even works for Windows.
Correct! The last time I wanted to npm-install a CLI but it needs gyp, I'm not familiar with the node thingy and I gave up after several failed attemps including installing the VC++ runtime, Python, etc....
node-gyp, though. In my experience, it's the native packages that cause problems, which is honestly to be expected because building a native library for Node to bind to in a cross-platform way is always going to be somewhat painful.
I know of no language runtime and ecosystem that has better cross-platform support than Node (hm ok maybe Java also). I develop solely on Windows (I just like it better) and virtually all of NPM just works on my box. Even stuff people never tested elsewhere than on their Macs, it just works. Express, webpack, mocha, phantomjs, it's really quite impressive if you ask me.