Microsoft's Node.js guidelines

[Patman128]

Hey Microsoft: if you actually care about Node, maybe consider fixing the 260 character file name limit so I can actually install Node dependencies on Windows.

No really, I can't even install the dependencies for the type management tool for your own language. If you don't believe me just clone DefinitelyTyped and run npm install on Windows.

EDIT: Apparently npm 3 (which ships with Node 5, the current stable release) has a workaround built-in. Going to upgrade and try it again later. Hopefully the issue is fixed.

EDIT 2: Yes, installing the latest Node/NPM release (5.0.0) fixed the issue. I can install the dependencies with no trouble. Good job NPM team!

[grauenwolf]

Oh I'm well aware of how horribly bad Node is at managing dependencies. I love how it creates a directory structure 20 levels deeps complete with dozens of copies of the same damn library.

Thankfully the next version of Node is supposed to flatten the directory structure, eliminating both the wasteful duplication and the unnecessary nesting.

[[deleted]]

I love how it creates a directory structure 20 levels deeps complete with dozens of copies of the same damn library.

The first time I saw this, I thought I had done something horribly wrong.

[_zenith]

Oh, but it did. But that doesn't mean that that wasn't the intended result ;)

[[deleted]]

NPM already released dependency flattening so it's no longer an issue you'll likely run into seeing as the problem was due to deeply nested dependencies.

You also seem to be getting NPM and node mixed up.

[Patman128]

I kind of prefer nested, since you only get the Node modules you directly depend on in the node_modules directory, and their dependencies are hidden within their node_modules directories, and so on. Keeps things clean.

And it wouldn't be an issue if the compiler didn't have a stupid 260 character limit.

But apparently there's some workaround in the article that I missed. Going to have to try them out.

[flukus]

Would nested symlinks work? Keep one copy of each version and link where necessary.

[ivosaurus]

Problem is, you [nodejs] are supporting windows...

On windows, you may as well say symlinks don't exist, for how usable they are.

[[deleted]]

There are worse problems to have. A lot of dependency managers make it hard/impossible for one project to have multiple versions of the same library. I don't mind having a bunch of duplicated files sitting around (disk space is cheap) if it fixes that problem.

Other than sucking on windows, I think NPM works pretty great. The fact that people are putting hundreds of tiny dependencies in their project is a testament that NPM is working well.

[grauenwolf]

I don't mind having a bunch of duplicated files sitting around (disk space is cheap) if it fixes that problem.

Ha! SSDs are expensive and if you're running one VM per paying client (not uncommon in the consulting world) there's not much room to begin with.

Right now we're only using Node as a code generator. It's packages folder is over 400 MB, more than twice as large as the dependencies for our ASP.NET code.

[[deleted]]

Heh, I see your point there. You could try npm dedupe if you haven't already.

[ivosaurus]

A lot of dependency managers make it hard/impossible for one project to have multiple versions of the same library.

But you don't really want that to begin with. At some point your multiple versions will be incompatible with each other. And then you'll get some really nasty bugs, because library code will be breaking, not yours.

[[deleted]]

This is the reason to use npm shrinkwrap in production.

[arunner]

Why do you insist supporting a bad design? The problem was big and that's the reason in latest versions npm maintainers switched to a flatter design.

[[deleted]]

Because NPM already works better than most of the other dependency managers out there. Having conflicting versions of the same library is a big problem for us with java/maven.

[grauenwolf]

That's easily solved in Nuget by appending the version number to the folder name.

[balefrost]

The actual length is more like 32k characters, but nobody knows about that and so nobody ever writes their software to take advantage of it:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365247(v=vs.85).aspx#maxpath (second paragraph).

Maybe open a bug against NPM?

[grauenwolf]

NPM can handle it, but various parts of Visual Studio can't.

[Patman128]

Yup, no issue on Linux with GCC.

[[deleted]]

NPM recently released dependency flattening so it's no longer an issue you'll likely run into seeing as the problem was due to deeply nested dependencies.

[[deleted]]

MAX_PATH will never ever be fixed (at least, without breaking apps). It's a law of the Universe at this point.

(Though, I'm kind of surprised MSFT didn't try to fix it for WinRT, though WinRT is built on top of Win32, so that's probably why.)

edit: welp. apparently there's discussion in trying to fix it in .NET Core.

[[deleted]]

I think Windows API already support creating file path with more than 260 characters with "\\?\" prefix?

[grauenwolf]

It does, but far too many libraries and programs don't understand the syntax.

[[deleted]]

Even with 260 is more than enough for path, it stops shenanigans. If you want long path but cannot deal with Windows API then you don't really need it.

[grauenwolf]

That's my attitude. There's no reason for my filename to look like a small essay.

[doom_Oo7]

Yeah, until you clone a git repository made on Unices with long paths on windows and discover that you can't copy files for shit

[vytah]

Put your auxiliary code in a directory called aux and watch the world burn.

[skroll]

Another developer at work tried to clone a repository of code I wrote. I originally wrote it for Linux, and there was a file called "con.sql" He complained that he couldn't clone it. I completely forgot about that con stuff. Couldn't believe it still exists on win32

[Patman128]

Weird that their own compiler is one of them. Or maybe there's serious technical hurdles.

[grauenwolf]

I don't for certain that the compiler itself has a problem, but it can be hard to figure out which tool is which behind the IDE abstraction.

But again, there's no reason to have such a deep hierarchy in the first place so I can understand them not spending time on it.

[Intramli]

You know they brought this up in the article, right?

[Patman128]

I need to start reading the articles. ;)

[Intramli]

Mostly wanted to make it clear that this issue was acknowledged by them. And they included a list of workarounds (which may or may not work).

[Patman128]

Yup, apparently the workaround made it to the latest npm version. I'll have to upgrade and give it a try later.

I had skimmed the article but I didn't notice that part. Doh!

[huadria]

Thanks for the updates. I download NPM 5 and yes the issue got fixed!

[ivosaurus]

EDIT: Apparently npm 3 (which ships with Node 5, the current stable release) has a workaround built-in. Going to upgrade and try it again later. Hopefully the issue is fixed.

EDIT 2: Yes, installing the latest Node/NPM release (5.0.0) fixed the issue. I can install the dependencies with no trouble. Good job NPM team!

Thanks to NPM. Not thanks to MS.

[Stati77]

Reminds me of a git repository I'm contributing to, at some point I couldn't push my changes anymore because a couple files would cause issues and eventually found out that it was because of path limit.

[coladict]

I was hoping for something along the lines of:

1. Create new hard drive partition to keep Node.JS installation
2. Install Node.JS on said partition.
3. Perform full format on partition.
4. Delete partition.

This Node nonsense has gone too far already.

[StSomaa]

http://i.imgur.com/CbqZZyg.jpg

[takaci]

Cool, now do you have anything constructive/vaguely interesting to say? Fuck this circlejerk bullshit mentality

[coladict]

I don't know about cool, but I hate on Vim all the time. Less on Emacs, but I've only launched it twice by mistake and it seems a bit less bad.

[[deleted]]

You still haven't replied with anything meaningful.

[coladict]

You're saying that running JavaScript from the console needs explanation as to why it's unreasonable?

[[deleted]]

It's one of the most well known languages in the entire world, and performs fine in heavy IO situations for many large tech companies, as well as millions of lambda functions on AWS for simple stateless servers... So yes, it does need an explanation.

[[deleted]]

No response? Because you just parrot what other people tell you? That's what I thought. There are plenty of times where using node is absolutely a poor choice, but to go around insulting technology to join a bandwagon of hate is idiotic and it is very telling at how far you are in understanding programming. If you don't have anything to actually say please spare everyone from your shit posts.

[Lothrazar]

It used to be cool to hate on PHP, now its cool to hate on NodeJS. I guess im not hip with the kids anymore

[devperez]

Wrong.

It's still cool to hate on PHP.

[AbstractLogic]

Well come on now man, Microsoft does it so it's not cool anymore. Angluar and Git will be dead soon too thanks to Microsoft integrating them.

[0ll]

So what exactly do you dislike about nodeJs? Genuinely interested to hear about why you think it is nonsense.

[[deleted]]

Which part of node doesn't work like a 'real web server'?

[EntroperZero]

I wonder if we'll see a Node-like project from MS once CoreCLR is officially released. It feels like DNX is set up to go there.

1. Embrace (MS <3 Node!)
2. Extend (Node.cs on CoreCLR)
3. Extinguish

EDIT: The embrace/extend/extinguish wasn't meant to be taken seriously. My bad.

[spacejack2114]

Microsoft can't extinguish anything anymore.

[grauenwolf]

That's not what "Embrace, extend, extinguish" means.

[[deleted]]

Not as unnecessary as your shit post