Cross-compiling Node.js for ARM6 (Raspberry Pi)

Question

I'm trying to get node.js v0.7.9 to compile for the raspberry pi, but as node and v8 are quite large, I'm hoping to be able to cross-compile on another more powerful PC. I'm using the linux-x86 arm-bcm2708-linux-gnueabi toolchain from https://github.com/raspberrypi/tools and have used them to successfully build other executables for the system. I ended up setting the CC,CXX,CPP,STRIP,OBJCOPY,etc. variables to the toolchain equivalents in the environmental variables and ran configure with: ./configure --dest-cpu=arm --without-snapshot to get the final executable. Copying it over to the system and running it however produces the following error:

Extension or internal compilation error at line 0.
Segmentation fault

However, the segmentation fault doesn't happen for any of the non-javascript tasks like node --version and node --help. Are there any CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS I might be missing causing this problem? Bit confused....

Solution 1

I've been working on this a bit since the question was originally asked, even added some patches to help auto-detect cross-compiler settings. Node.js in the repositories is (at the moment) a rather old version, and may or may not support the full hard-float (VFP) architecture.

For a full detailed HOWTO, see Nathan Rajlich's write up at http://n8.io/cross-compiling-nodejs-v0.8/

I've posted binaries for others who don't want to go through all this hassle for the same hardware at https://gist.github.com/3245130

Solution 2

NodeJS is available pre-compiled for a few Linux distributions: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Installing-Node.js-via-package-manager

Since NodeJS is still in testing phase for Debian, in order to install NodeJS on my Raspberry Pi under Debian wheezy, I do:

sudo su
echo deb ftp://ftp.dk.debian.org/debian/ sid main > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sid.list
apt-get update
apt-get install nodejs
rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sid.list
apt-get update
exit

NodeJS works very fine and stable on my Raspberry Pi.

Solution 3

Just a note - this worked great for me but didn't install NPM. So if you want NPM (which you most assuredly do I would think) make sure to run

apt-get install npm

after installing node before you remove the update locations from the update list.

Solution 4

Here's the script I wrote to automatically cross compile NodeJS for ARMv6 (Raspbery Pi) using Jenkins.

https://gist.github.com/hertzg/12c2d7fc40f68ff6deeb

I've used @Adam M-W's 'packing' snippet

The script will automatically download everything required and start building.

Just note that current (v0.10.30) version will not compile due to this issue: https://github.com/joyent/node/issues/8062#issuecomment-52541037

Run with _PARAMS_NODEJS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_URL=http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.10.29/node-v0.10.29.tar.gz to get the latest cross compile-able version.

#!/bin/bash

set -e
set -x

### IF we dont have archive url prefix
if [ -z "$_PARAMS_NODEJS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_URL" ]; then
    _PARAMS_NODEJS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_URL=$(wget -qO- http://nodejs.org/dist/latest/ | egrep -o 'node-v[0-9\.]+.tar.gz' | tail -1);
    _PARAMS_NODEJS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_URL="http://nodejs.org/dist/latest/"$_PARAMS_NODEJS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_URL
fi

if [ -z "$_PRAMS_RPI_TOOLS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_URL" ]; then
    _PRAMS_RPI_TOOLS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_URL="https://github.com/raspberrypi/tools/archive/master.tar.gz"
fi;

NODEJS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_FILENAME=$(basename $_PARAMS_NODEJS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_URL)
NODEJS_SOURCE_DIRECTORY=${NODEJS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_FILENAME%.tar.gz}
#Download NodeJS
echo "-> Searching for NodeJS "$NODEJS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_FILENAME;
if [ ! -e "$PWD/$NODEJS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_FILENAME" ]; then
    echo "--> Downloading from "$_PARAMS_NODEJS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_URL;
    wget --no-check-certificate -O $NODEJS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_FILENAME $_PARAMS_NODEJS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_URL
    echo "--> Download finished!"
fi;

echo "--> Extracting"
rm -rf $NODEJS_SOURCE_DIRECTORY
tar --overwrite -xf $NODEJS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_FILENAME

echo "--> Linking"
ln -snf "$PWD/$NODEJS_SOURCE_DIRECTORY" "$PWD/node"
echo "-> Done!"


echo "-> Searching Raspberry Pi Toolset";
if [ ! -d "$PWD/rpi" ]; then

    if [ ! -e "$PWD/rpi-tools.tar.gz" ] || [ -s "$PWD/rpi-tools.tar.gz" ]; then
        echo "--> Downloading from "$_PRAMS_RPI_TOOLS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_URL
        wget --no-check-certificate -O "rpi-tools.tar.gz" $_PRAMS_RPI_TOOLS_SOURCE_ARCHIVE_URL
        echo "--> Download finished"
    else
        echo "--> Found rpi-tools.tar.gz."
    fi

    echo "--> Extracting"
    tar xf "rpi-tools.tar.gz"
    echo "--> Linking tools-master to rpi"
    ln -snf "$PWD/tools-master" "$PWD/rpi"
else
    echo "-> found"
fi;
echo "-> Done!"

echo "-> Cross-Compile..."

echo "--> Setup ENV"
export PATH="$PWD/rpi/arm-bcm2708/arm-bcm2708hardfp-linux-gnueabi/bin:"$PATH
export HOST="arm-bcm2708hardfp-linux-gnueabi"
export CC="${HOST}-gcc"
export CXX="${HOST}-g++"
export AR="${HOST}-ar"
export RANLIB="${HOST}-ranlib"
export LD="${HOST}-ld"
export CPP="${HOST}-gcc -E"
export STRIP="${HOST}-strip"
export OBJCOPY="${HOST}-objcopy"
export OBJDUMP="${HOST}-objdump"
export NM="${HOST}-nm"
export AS="${HOST}-as"

"${HOST}-gcc" --version
echo "--> Waiting 5s to contiue"
pushd "$PWD/node"
sleep 5

echo "--> Clean"
make clean

echo "--> Configure"
./configure --prefix=/ --without-snapshot --dest-cpu=arm --dest-os=linux

echo "--> Build"
VERSION=${NODEJS_SOURCE_DIRECTORY##node-}
export BINARYNAME=node-${VERSION}-linux-arm-armv6j-vfp-hard
mkdir ${BINARYNAME}
make install DESTDIR=${BINARYNAME} V=1 PORTABLE=1

echo "--> Pack"
cp README.md ${BINARYNAME}
cp LICENSE ${BINARYNAME}
cp ChangeLog ${BINARYNAME}
tar -czf ${BINARYNAME}.tar.gz ${BINARYNAME}

echo "--> Cleanup"
popd
mv $PWD"/node/${BINARYNAME}.tar.gz" "./"
echo "-> Done!"

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Comments

[kmpm]

There is a guy that tried to do a cross compile of everything but ended up crosscompiling v8 and compiling node on the RPI. blog.greg-net.co.uk/post/21228054876/… And here is a link for compiling on the RPI in Arch.. nodejs-news.com/nodejs-tech/nodejs-armv5-armv6-howto You might have seen them but could be good for someone else..

[Erdogan Kurtur]

if you get a NO_PUBKEY error as I did try following lines to get and load required key. gpg --recv-keys AED4B06F473041FA --keyserver keys.gnupg.net gpg -a --export AED4B06F473041FA | apt-key add - good luck

[Pluto]

I tried this at first, but the version of node.js available was 0.6, which is like 2 years old! At least nvm had a newer version available... But still 0.7.

[Saran]

I'm getting node -v --> "Segmentation fault". How can I fix this (apart from building from source)?

[Banjocat]

This helped me setup on an embedded project that does not run a package manager. Thanks a lot!

[Brannon]

Does this install the latest version of nodejs? When I run this node 0.6 is downloaded.

[Nathan Friedly]

This didn't work for me, libc6 segfaulted on install.. and uninstall. I ended up just wiping my sd card and reinstalling raspbian because I couldn't figure out how to clean it up.