Install native modules for NW.js with npm

2016/11/08

I'm here to introduce a way to install native modules for NW.js directly with npm. You won't need to rebuild each native modules one-by-one after npm install any more, which will significantly save your time on native modules.

Following instructions work for all platforms and all releases (LTS and non-LTS) of NW.js:

# Install nw-gyp globally
npm install -g nw-gyp
# Setup target NW.js version
export npm_config_target=0.18.5
# Setup build architecture, ia32 or x64
export npm_config_arch=x64
export npm_config_target_arch=x64
# Setup env for modules built with node-pre-gyp
export npm_config_runtime=node-webkit
export npm_config_build_from_source=true
# Setup nw-gyp as node-gyp
export npm_config_node_gyp=$(which nw-gyp)
# Run npm install
npm install

Issues on Windows: npm_config_node_gyp must be set to path\to\global\node_modules\nw-gyp\bin\nw-gyp.js instead of its batch script nw-gyp.cmd. This should be a bug of npm.

More detailed guides for using native modules with NW.js are available on the official documentation site.