Fix build on alpine-arm64, actually resolves #180

[zotanmew]

I'd highly recommend releasing this as soon as possible, this is breaking arm64 docker images, presumably not just for me :)

[zotanmew]

The failing CI checks are strange. I just ran exactly the same actions on my branch and they all passed o.O (ref: https://github.com/zotanmew/node-re2/actions/runs/6757292988/)

[uhop]

Don't despair — sometimes (well, frequently) Github CI fails for no discernable reasons. I'll re-run the test.

[uhop]

Hmm, nope, it is reproducible. Apparently, a MacOS runner for Node 21 has no distutils.

[uhop]

Welcome to the beautiful world of Node extensions, where I spent 99% of my time wrangling setup files instead of coding.

gyp info find Python using Python version 3.12.0 found at "/usr/local/bin/python3"

From https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.12.html

Python 3.12 is the latest stable release of the Python programming language, with a mix of changes to the language and the standard library. The library changes focus on cleaning up deprecated APIs, usability, and correctness. Of note, the distutils package has been removed from the standard library.

Obviously, I don't use distutils but apparently the dependencies (gyp?) do. The whole system is very brittle and that's why I was heartbroken when the maintainers of google/re2 decided to use absail for no apparent reason increasing the dependencies and greatly expanding the surface of "what can/will go wrong".

I suggest waiting for node-gyp or gyp to fix it — it is not like my code broke it. The change has broken all Node extensions.

PS: I kinda thinking of creating a project based on Node-API or even WASM to avoid the dependency compatibility hell. Not sure it'll help. :-(

PPS: I hope now people understand why supporting more architectures is not trivial.

[zotanmew]

Very strange. It runs successfully on my branch 🥴 https://github.com/zotanmew/node-re2/actions/runs/6757292988

[uhop]

It still fails, but worked for me in a separate brunch. Merging...

[viceice]

Welcome to the beautiful world of Node extensions, where I spent 99% of my time wrangling setup files instead of coding.

gyp info find Python using Python version 3.12.0 found at "/usr/local/bin/python3"

From https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.12.html

Python 3.12 is the latest stable release of the Python programming language, with a mix of changes to the language and the standard library. The library changes focus on cleaning up deprecated APIs, usability, and correctness. Of note, the distutils package has been removed from the standard library.

Obviously, I don't use distutils but apparently the dependencies (gyp?) do. The whole system is very brittle and that's why I was heartbroken when the maintainers of google/re2 decided to use absail for no apparent reason increasing the dependencies and greatly expanding the surface of "what can/will go wrong".

I suggest waiting for node-gyp or gyp to fix it — it is not like my code broke it. The change has broken all Node extensions.

PS: I kinda thinking of creating a project based on Node-API or even WASM to avoid the dependency compatibility hell. Not sure it'll help. :-(

PPS: I hope now people understand why supporting more architectures is not trivial.

a wasm version would be great, you would only need one build for different node versions and architectures. ❤️