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Nowadays you can bundle a node app as a single binary file. It’s an underused feature, maybe it will catch on.

enva2712 2y ago
I saw that deno did this but cool to see node picked it up too. I wish there was an option to run turbofan at build to generate the instructions rather than shipping the entire engine, but i guess that would require static deps and no eval, which can’t really be statically checked with certainty
- binarymax 2y ago
  The engine is actually pretty small. Something like 50-100MB if memory serves (when I was using pkg)
dgellow 2y ago
Could you share how that can be done? I spent some time this year trying to pack a node tool into a single fat binary for a specific use case where we wanted a history of versioned executables - i.e a build job that needs to run specific versions of the packed tool in a specific order determined by external factors. I tried Vercel pkg, Vercel ncc, nexe, and a few other tools I can’t remember right now. They all had issues with node v20, some dependencies, or seemed to not be maintained anymore. I ended up relying on esbuild as a compromise to get a fat script containing all sources and dependencies, tarballed with some static files we rely upon we can at least get versioned, reproducible runs (modulo the node env). Still not perfect, a single binary would be preferable
- binarymax 2y ago
  I’ve used pkg with success for some small apps - curious to know why it didn’t work for you. Now you can use this native feature (not totally stable yet though) which I’ve been meaning to try https://nodejs.org/api/single-executable-applications.html https://nodejs.org/api/single-executable-applications.html
  - dgellow 2y ago
    I don't remember the details, and cannot find my notes on vercel/pkg. But looking at https://github.com/vercel/pkg https://github.com/vercel/pkg right now I see the project has been deprecated in favour of single-executable-applications
    - binarymax 2y ago
      Bummer that they deprecated/archived it before the native feature was stable.

I saw that deno did this but cool to see node picked it up too. I wish there was an option to run turbofan at build to generate the instructions rather than shipping the entire engine, but i guess that would require static deps and no eval, which can’t really be statically checked with certainty

binarymax 2y ago
The engine is actually pretty small. Something like 50-100MB if memory serves (when I was using pkg)

dgellow 2y ago

Could you share how that can be done? I spent some time this year trying to pack a node tool into a single fat binary for a specific use case where we wanted a history of versioned executables - i.e a build job that needs to run specific versions of the packed tool in a specific order determined by external factors. I tried Vercel pkg, Vercel ncc, nexe, and a few other tools I can’t remember right now. They all had issues with node v20, some dependencies, or seemed to not be maintained anymore. I ended up relying on esbuild as a compromise to get a fat script containing all sources and dependencies, tarballed with some static files we rely upon we can at least get versioned, reproducible runs (modulo the node env). Still not perfect, a single binary would be preferable

binarymax 2y ago
I’ve used pkg with success for some small apps - curious to know why it didn’t work for you. Now you can use this native feature (not totally stable yet though) which I’ve been meaning to try https://nodejs.org/api/single-executable-applications.html https://nodejs.org/api/single-executable-applications.html
- dgellow 2y ago
  I don't remember the details, and cannot find my notes on vercel/pkg. But looking at https://github.com/vercel/pkg https://github.com/vercel/pkg right now I see the project has been deprecated in favour of single-executable-applications
  - binarymax 2y ago
    Bummer that they deprecated/archived it before the native feature was stable.