Getting NW.js (node-webkit) v0.12.3 to work with Edge.js

This is something I needed to get functioning for work. Luckily it wasn't so difficult--the hardest part was attempting to figure out why after I compiled Edge.js properly for NW.js v0.12.3 why it wouldn't actually attempt to load the native edge.node module.

First things first, we need to make sure the following is installed on your machine:

Windows 7 SDK 7.1

Since I already do quite a bit of development on my machine I was lucky to already have VS 2013 & the Windows 7 SDK 7.1 installed.

Next, go ahead and open up the "Windows SDK 7.1 Command Prompt" from the start menu.

For the next steps, Vijay Kumar has provided some excellent steps here:

Brief procedure for some one who might be interested.
My code was in the directory C:\tdameri\xlsxcplus\test1
I used the Windows 7 SDK 7.1 command prompt (you need to have Windows 7.1 SDK installed)
Commands in the command prompt
setenv /x86
cd C:\tdameri\xlsxcplus\test1
npm install edge
cd C:\tdameri\xlsxcplus\test1\node_modules\edge
nw-gyp configure --target=v0.8.4
nw-gyp build
The build happened without errors.
Copy the edge.node file from edge\build\release folder
and replace the edge.node files the edge\lib folder.

Unfortunately it wasn't so simple as it appeared my corporate proxy was blocking or throwing 403 errors when nw-gyp was attempting to pull the NW.js headers from the Amazon AWS site. After looking through a bit of the code, I discovered install.js did in fact contain proxy support:

// basic support for a proxy server
var proxyUrl = gyp.opts.proxy || process.env.http_proxy || process.env.HTTP_PROXY || process.env.npm_config_proxy;

Woohoo! I was able able to simply set my HTTP_PROXY environment variable and move forward. A quick note is that Vijay was building for x86 while I was building for x64, therefore, the only change I needed from his steps was modifying the first line to:

setenv /x64

At this point, my custom edge.node was building properly:

Following Vijay's steps above, I found that even though we have build edge.node, we now need to copy it from:

node_modules/edge/build/Release/edge.node

Over to:

node_modules/edge/lib/native/win32/x64/

Speaking of my old friend Vijay--it looked like he didn't realize which folder to copy the newly compiled binary to. In my case, I figured if I was running NW.js v0.12.3--why not copy it over to the 0.12.0 directory?

Thinking I was in the clear I attempted firing up NW.js and discovered to my horror:

Boo! As it turns out, the error does in fact state Edge appears to be looking for a v1.2.0 folder. Digging into the Edge.js code more, I discovered the following under node_modules/edge/lib/edge.js:

var versionMap = [
  [/^0\.8\./, '0.8.22'],
  [/^0\.10\./, '0.10.0'],
  [/^0\.12\./, '0.12.0'],
  [/^4\./, '4.1.1'],
];

Aha! So since Edge is looking to match v1.2.0, I went ahead and modified the above to so:

var versionMap = [
  [/^0\.8\./, '0.8.22'],
  [/^0\.10\./, '0.10.0'],
  [/^0\.12\./, '0.12.0'],
  [/^4\./, '4.1.1'],
  [/^1\.2\./, '1.2.0'],
];

Then proceeded to create the following directory:

node_modules/edge/lib/native/win32/x64/1.2.0

And finally dump all the files from the "0.12.0" files into this folder. After copying the files over, boomzy:

Hope this saves someone a headache.

-CJ