Escape hatch for application builder [call out to node to use the JS ecosystem]

[thangngoc89]

As a beginner, the ecosystem could be overwhelming. To finish the application on time, I think we can cheat a little and use an escape hatch.

With background in Javascript, my escape hatch would be Node.js.

Here is the Dockerfile for statically compiled node.

FROM alpine
RUN apk add git python3 gcc g++ linux-headers make
RUN git clone https://github.com/nodejs/node && \
        cd node && \
        ./configure --fully-static --enable-static && \
        make
FROM scratch
COPY --from=0 /node/out/Release/node /node
CMD /node

The image is around 81MB, build time is a round 45 minutes on a 4 cores, core i5-3xxx machine.

A prebuilt image is here https://hub.docker.com/r/thangngoc89/node-static

I will find the time to properly publish this with correct node version and build matrix. In the mean time, it's good to have an escape hatch.

Usage examples:

• Start node repl:

docker run --rm -it thangngoc89/node-static:latest /node

• Copy node as part of your docker build

# Dockerfile

FROM debian
COPY --from=thangngoc89/node-static /node /node

Now you application can call /node and execute code

[aantron]

I understood this issue only on the last line of the comment :) It's about having node ready for a native app to call into, so you can use various JS ecosystem libraries.

@thangngoc89 what do you think should be done with this knowledge? Create an example? Add just a note somewhere? Leave this in an issue so people can search the repo for it?

[thangngoc89]

@aantron I think creating an example would be nice. I created the solution because I can’t figure out how to deal with utf-8 libraries for making slug from string. But now I do know how to do it in OCaml 😂.