node-pre-gyp VS patch-package

In May 2022, Dane Springmeyer, the primary maintainer of node-pre-gyp, a critical tool in the Node.js ecosystem, announced his decision to step down. This wasn't just another developer moving on; for nearly a decade he had been maintaining the project.

The problem is that it determines the the system's platform and architecture using the binary compiling package node-pre-gyp and this very savior of a Github issue details how node-pre-gyp is not handling ARM architecture detection properly and basically mixing everything up. Because it's not detecting properly, even if we build our own binding with --build-from-source when installing, it still won't work because it is compiling the wrong binding file for the wrong architecture. To make matters worse, if we don't use --build-from-source, it just simply fetches the Intel precompiled binding file. napi-v6-darwin-unknown-x64

Indeed, Snowboy uses node-pre-gyp which helps to publish and install Node.js C++ addons from binaries. So when a new Node.js version is shipped, node-pre-gyp must update its listing of the supported targets by specifying the:

Node is like 95% OK with ARM chips, so you might have a tricky dependency. Every time I had problems it was related to something depending on node-pre-gyp, there is an issue about it .

patch-package - Lets app authors instantly make and keep fixes to npm dependencies.

In order to allow users to use their device as a controller to adjust the position of the camera and find stars, I use the depreciated DeviceOrientationControls by patching it back into Three. In order for DeviceOrientationControls to function, we need access the user to grant access to their device's orientation. I attempt to gain access to this, alongside their camera, during a previous step of the UX using a custom composable I wrote for this purpose. You can see that permission step in the mockup video above. Once this permission is granted, we can initialize our DeviceOrienationControls with a single line.

If you use Yarn, there’s the `yarn patch` command [1], which lets you maintain patches for your dependencies. Even though I try to upstream patches wherever possible, sometimes you just want to apply a quick patch and move on, especially if the dependency is poorly maintained or even worse, deeply nested in your dependency hierarchy. I use `yarn patch` regularly, it’s one of the main reasons why I moved to Yarn in the first place.

If you’re not using Yarn, there seems to be a similar thing on npm, `patch-package`. [2] I never had to use that though.

[1]: https://yarnpkg.com/cli/patch

[2]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/patch-package

You can use patch-package to edit the part of the library.

patch-package

NPM doesn't have a patch command, but you can use patch-package to achieve the same result.

If there's issue ticket discussing it and someone can fix it, ask for patch file and use patch-package to patch it