Bashpack NPM | npm.io

Bashpacker

bashpacker packs a nodejs project into a single bash file that can be executed without the need to install nodejs or anything else It will include the nodejs binary to be executed

Installation:

$ npm install bashpack

Sample CLI usage

This is how we would create a bashpack from the statsd project

# Get a fresh repo
$ git clone https://github.com/etsy/statsd.git
$ cd statsd

# Install all dependencies (--production will limit the ones needed for production)
$ npm install --production

# Dedupe the node_modules used by dependencies
$ npm dedupe

# Create a bashpack config
$ bashpack init

# Create a bash script 'statsd.run' from 'current dir' and launch 'bin/statsd' on run
$ bashpack . bin/statsd -o statsd.run

# Now run the bashpack
$ ./statsd.run exampleConfig.js

Sample code usage

var BashPack = require('bashpack');
var bashPack = new BashPack();
var baseDir = '.';
var startScript = 'bin/statsd';

bashPack.build(baseDir, startScript, function(err) {
  if (err) {
    console.log('error happened:'+ err.message);
  }
});

Inspired by

Makeself - https://github.com/megastep/makeself

Tweaks made:

fix for md5 to work
prefix the archive options (info, list, check) with --bashpack-
pass all arguments directly to script that is started

Limitations

When the bashpack is created, it will include the '.node' (native modules) for the architecture it is created on. There is currently no good way of providing multi-architecture node/native modules.

If your module does not have native module dependencies, you can specify a node file from another architecture to be included

Also it can not guess the additional shared libs your application was compiled against, so you have to manually specify them.

Todos/Ideas

provide option to specify tempdir
report error if bashpack is run on the wrong architecture
integrate .bashpack-ignore in package.json
ability to pass nodejs options
grunt plugin
include DYLIBS in bashpack
guess the startScript from the main in the package.json
guess the archive name from the module description
bashpackignore syntax to be similar from gitignore & npmignore
auto-build backfrom from npm (download, install --production, dedupe, bashpack)
copy baseDir first and rebuild it from a clean node_modules dir
auto-download nodejs binary/arch/version/etc to be included
multi architecture bashpacks : by including multiple nodejs binaries in the bashpack and selecting the correct one