node-gyp dependency vs prebuild on Windows

[dfgordon]

I found my language only works with node bindings if I include node-gyp as a dependency, but only on Windows. On Linux this dependency was not needed.

On the other hand tree-sitter-javascript does not seem to require node-gyp, on Windows or otherwise. The only difference I could find was that tree-sitter-javascript has the prebuilds directory, while my language does not.

Is it correct to conclude, as seems to make sense, that if prebuilds are available you don't need node-gyp, otherwise you do? What I can't figure is why Linux didn't need it; maybe to do with specific config.

[amaanq]

I can't remember when I updated the javascript grammar (if it was before or after moving to NAPI and removing the need for node-gyp), but you do not need node-gyp, you can just use prebuildify or node-gyp-build to take care of that

[dfgordon]

So I have prebuildify and node-gyp-build in the package.json in what seems to be the same way as others. Maybe the problem is the publishing steps. I was supposing tree-sitter-generate would generate whatever is needed for publishing to npmjs. Maybe prebuildify has to be run explicitly, is that right? I'm not using the github workflows for publishing at present.

[amaanq]

if you have a scanner, you need to add this to binding.gyp otherwise it won't build properly

otherwise, yeah, tree-sitter generate adds the binding files you need, but you have to build them with prebuildify