A command line tool for easily doing prebuilds for multiple version of node/iojs on a specific platform

$ npm install -g prebuild

• Builds native modules for any version of node/iojs, without having to switch between different versions of node/iojs to do so. This works by only downloading the correct headers and telling node-gyp to use those instead of the ones installed on your system.
• Support for uploading (--upload) prebuilds to GitHub.
• Support for downloading (--download) prebuilds from GitHub. You can also download from a host of your choice and you can customize the url format as you see fit.
• Downloaded binaries will be cached in ~/.npm/_prebuilds/ so you only need to download them once.
• Support for stripping (--strip) debug information.

Create prebuilds for iojs v2.4.0 and node 0.12.7 (v prefix is optional) and write them to ./prebuilds/

$ cd a-native-module
$ prebuild -t v2.4.0 -t 0.12.7

For more options run prebuild --help. The prebuilds created are compatible with node-pre-gyp

prebuild supports uploading prebuilds to GitHub releases. If the release doesn't exist, it will be created for you. To upload prebuilds simply add the --upload <github-token> option:

$ prebuild -t v2.4.0 -t 0.12.7 -u <github-token>

If you don't want to use the token on cli you can also stick that in e.g. ~/.prebuildrc:

{
  "upload": "<github-token>"
}

See this page for more information on how to create GitHub tokens.

prebuild supports downloading prebuilds from GitHub by default. To download a prebuild for your specific platform simply use the --download flag.

$ prebuild --download

If no suitable binary is found for the current platform / node version, prebuild will fallback to node-gyp rebuild. Native modules that have a javascript fallback can use --no-compile to prevent this.

Once a binary has been downloaded prebuild will require() the module and if that fails it will also fallback to building it.

The downloaded binaries will be cached in your npm cache meaning you'll only have to download them once.

Add prebuild --download to your package.json so the binaries will be downloaded when the module is installed

{
  "name": "a-native-module",
  "scripts": {
    "install": "prebuild --download"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "prebuild": "^2.3.0"
  }
}

If you are hosting your binaries elsewhere you can provide a host to the --download flag. The host string can also be a template for constructing more intrinsic urls. Download from example.com with a custom format for the binary name:

$ prebuild --download https://foo.com/{name}-{version}-{abi}-{platform}-{arch}.tar.gz

There's also support for node-pre-gyp style by utilizing the binary property in package.json.

The following placeholders can be used:

• {name} or {package_name}: the package name taken from package.json
• {version}: package version taken from package.json
• {major}: major version taken from version
• {minor}: minor version taken from version
• {patch}: patch version taken from version
• {prerelease}: prelease version taken from version
• {build}: build version taken from version
• {abi} or {node_abi}: ABI version of node/iojs taken from current --target or process.version if not specified, see ABI section below for more information
• {platform}: platform taken from --platform or process.platform if not specified
• {arch}: architecture taken from --arch or process.arch if not specified
• {configuration}: 'Debug' if --debug is specified, otherwise 'Release'
• {module_name}: taken from binary.module_name property from package.json

You just need to do a prebuild for every version of node/iojs that have new ABI (application binary interface).

As of writing the following command will prebuild all possible ABI versions for iojs and for all node versions greater than 0.8:

prebuild -t 0.10.40 -t 0.12.7 -t 1.0.4 -t 1.8.4 -t 2.4.0

Optionally, to always build for the above versions you can add a rc file to ~/.prebuildrc with the following content. Note that using ~/.prebuildrc will instruct prebuild to do this for all modules. Instead you should consider adding a .prebuildrc inside your project, so the module determines which version it supports rather than a global setting.

target[] = 0.10.40
target[] = 0.12.7
target[] = 1.0.4
target[] = 1.8.4
target[] = 2.4.0

Another option is to use --all to build for all known abi versions (see targets.js for currently available versions)

$ prebuild --all

$ prebuild -h
prebuild [options]

  --path        -p  path        (make a prebuild here)
  --target      -t  version     (version to prebuild against)
  --all                         (prebuild for all known abi versions)
  --upload      -u  [gh-token]  (upload prebuilds to github)
  --download    -d  [url]       (download prebuilds, no url means github)
  --preinstall  -i  script      (run this script before prebuilding)
  --compile     -c              (compile your project using node-gyp)
  --no-compile                  (skip compile fallback when downloading)
  --strip                       (strip debug information)
  --debug                       (set Debug or Release configuration)
  --verbose                     (log verbosely)
  --version                     (print prebuild version and exit)

MIT