paulober/Bindings-Builder

Builds node-serialport bindings

!! IMPORTANT !!

This repo is a fork of github.com/cpwood/Bindings-Builder.

My changes:

• updated the action version in this github workflow
• changed the target url so it uses my fork of github.com/cpwood/Pico-Go as target
• added new supported VS Code versions in packages.json

(All changes can be overseved in github's commit list for this repo -> github.com/paulober/Bindings-Builder/commits?author=paulober)

Bindings-Builder

Builds node-serialport bindings for use with Pico-Go.

• now it targets Pico-Go fork by me named Pico-W-Go

Overview

While serialport includes bindings for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms "out of the box", Pico-Go is still left with several issues:

1. The bindings used by serialport are native, meaning they have to be compiled for the OS and processor architecture, but also compiled specially for Electron;
2. Pre-built bindings aren't available for arm64 platforms (e.g. Raspberry Pi or Apple's M1 range);
3. We're reliant on the availability and quality of the pre-built images. We've already encountered issues where the pre-build bindings simply don't work, and historically it appears there's been some slowness to keep the pre-built images up-to-date.

Bindings-Builder deals with these issues. It allows us to build our own bindings on-demand using GitHub actions. The bindings are then added to the Pico-Go repo's develop branch.

The following platforms and architectures are supported by Bindings-Builder:

• Windows (win32):
  • x64
• macOs (darwin):
  • x64
  • arm64
• Linux (linux):
  • x64
  • arm64

Workflow

Bindings-Builder is intended to be run as a GitHub Action as opposed to something on your own machine. The general workflow is as follows:

1. Change the package.json file to configure the version of VS Code you're looking to support:

     "codeVersions": [
       {
         "code": "1.54.0",
         "electron": "11.2.2",
         "modules": 85
       },
       {
         "code": "1.53.0",
         "electron": "11.2.1",
         "modules": 85
       },
       {
         "code": "1.52.0",
         "electron": "9.3.5",
         "modules": 80
       },
       {
         "code": "1.51.0",
         "electron": "9.3.3",
         "modules": 80
       }
     ],

   2. Commit and push the changes to package.json;
   3. The build action will then run on hosted Windows, Linux and Mac agents.

Establishing VS Code Versions

The current policy is to support the current insider build, the current RTM build and the two previous RTM builds.

The information for package.json can be determined as follows:

1. Look at the .yarnrc file in VS Code's repo, e.g.:

   disturl "https://electronjs.org/headers"
   target "11.2.3"
   runtime "electron"
   

   The Electron version is the target value. The Insider build is on the master branch and other RTM versions are tagged.

2. Look up the modules version at the Electron Releases repo's lite.json file.