But now that I am using the onoff (epoll) modules for hardware interaction, ‘npm install’ won’t work on my local machine. I want to add chart.js (and likely many more modules) to my project.
So specific question is: how do I ‘npm install chart.js’ in my project?
When I run it on my development machine I get node gyp errors because epoll needs to be compiled on the rpi target.
(base) % npm install chart.js
npm WARN read-shrinkwrap This version of npm is compatible with lockfileVersion@1, but package-lock.json was generated for lockfileVersion@2. I’ll try to do my best with it!
I checked and it seems npm still does not have a way to only add a dependency without installing
Can you please try using the add-dependencies package?
You can run npx add-dependencies chart.js from the root of your project where your package.json is.
A more abstract question is, how should I manage the development of a client (browser) and server (rpi target specific)? Suggestions welcome…
We are aware of the friction in developing with such a use case. We have several ideas we are exploring one of which is to provide a IDE on the device itself(RPi in this case) where you would be able to edit the source code directly on the target and not run into such issues. However, this is still in the early phase of ideation.
For now, maybe you can try local mode which allows to develop directly on the device with instant reloading functionality Develop locally - Balena Documentation
@ikellymo Are you using this npm module for onoff? onoff - npm
I was using that for dev with a motion sensor that would trigger the LEDs
I just created a motionSensorFake function in order to develop other parts of the app locally.
You could do some kind of featureFlag or something like:
if (host !== 'localhost') {
const { motionSensor } = require('./motion-sensor');
motionSensor(wsServer);
} else {
const { motionSensorFake } = require('./motion-sensor');
motionSensorFake(wsServer);
}
You can also use local mode and install packages directly on the device if you need to just test to see if it works before rebuilding your docker ```balena ssh deviceid.local service```
Also you could potentially use nvm to manage node versions and have that in your docker file for example:
nvm install 18
Here's a Dockerfile.template for a project with working node-gyp and onoff
ARG NODEJS_VERSION=“17”
FROM balenalib/%%BALENA_MACHINE_NAME%%-debian-node:${NODEJS_VERSION}-bookworm