feat!: add experimental sea support and drop nodejs 16 support

[robertsLando]

Adds cross-arch and cross-os node sea support with flag --sea. Limitation: accepts a single executable file as input, may require a pre-build step using esbuild for multi-file applications

BREAKING CHANGE: Drop support for NodeJS 16

[pmosconi]

Hi,
just tested it building with --sea -t node20-linux,node20-win,node20-mac on Windows, using bash.
All 3 executables are created, I ran both win and linux (in wsl Ubuntu and on native Ubuntu) and they work.
I couldn't test the mac one for lack thereof.

Only glitch: I got the following warning at the end of build
Warning Failed to cleanup the temp directory C:\Users\PAOLOM~1\AppData\Local\Temp\pkg-sea\1729950081989
and indeed the folder is there.

Thanks for your work!

[robertsLando]

Hi @pmosconi and thanks for your feedback 🙏🏻 I have been able to reproduce the windows issue about directory cleanup, I sincerely have no clue why that happens, I don't have a windows pc, could you check the that? Everything is located in lib/sea.ts, it's the last function called at the end of sea function

[pmosconi]

Hi @robertsLando , I tried to reproduce the error creating a small node function but, needless to say, I've been unable.
It can be a timing issue or more likely a permission issue or the typical Windows mystery issue...
BTW looking at node fs docs I found this at fsPromises.rmdir(path[, options]):

To get a behavior similar to the rm -rf Unix command, use fsPromises.rm() with options { recursive: true, force: true }.

My 2 cents:

1. add force: true option,
2. trap any error and fail silently with no warning

The AppData/Local/Temp folder is full of crap and I believe that most programs (MS included) don't really bother to clean it up.

This is my test code (that cleans up after itself):

import { writeFile, rm, mkdir, copyFile } from 'fs/promises';

const TEST_DIR = '/Users/PAOLOM~1/AppData/Local/Temp/test-pkg-rm';

const test = async () => {
  await mkdir(TEST_DIR);
  await writeFile(TEST_DIR +'/test.txt', 'Hello World!');
  await mkdir(TEST_DIR +'/test1');
  await writeFile(TEST_DIR +'/test1/test1.txt', 'Hello World!');
  await copyFile('big-executable-linux', TEST_DIR +'/test1/big-executable-linux');
  await copyFile('big-executable-macos', TEST_DIR +'/test1/big-executable-macos');
  await copyFile('big-executable-win.exe', TEST_DIR +'/test1/big-executable-win.exe');
  await rm(TEST_DIR, { recursive: true });
}

test();

Best regards

[robertsLando]

Grazie Paolo for looking at this :) Will try to add the force option! :)

[lastelok]

Hi, --sea flag not hides source code, may it be enabled?

[robertsLando]

Not sure about that, I don't see mentions of this in docs: https://nodejs.org/api/single-executable-applications.html

[lastelok]

Not sure about that, I don't see mentions of this in docs: https://nodejs.org/api/single-executable-applications.html

Yes, seems no such option. For me pkg nice and simple way to make executable and hide source code, which is important for me. By the way, thank you very much for maintaining pkg, you do great work, appreciate it. ESM and new node version is nice 😊

[robertsLando]

Yes, seems no such option. For me pkg nice and simple way to make executable and hide source code, which is important for me

I understand that, the problem is that keeping pkg maintained is hard because of we need to patch nodejs every time in order to make it work and this takes lot of time, sea is my bet for the future but I dunno when and if it will ever be a drop in replacement to pkg