Publish native modules independently.

[mohsen1]

Can you publish and maintain latest iojs native modules in npm? If we want to support all active versions of Node then we can't simply require(<native module>) since it has different behaviors in different versions of Node.

For example, breaking changes in url module caused an issue for our test here. So now it's not safe to require url module anymore since you don't know what you are going to get back.

[mscdex]

Typically this is handled by explicitly specifying engines in your package.json and/or branching on process.version when you need to smooth over differences between major node.js/io.js versions that you're supporting for a particular (major) version of your project/module.

[Fishrock123]

Version-checking in your code will be the most robust for backwards-compat. Otherwise, to send warnings, use the engines field.

Another option if you really need to maintain versions against node major releases, would be: module-node.version.numbers

[mohsen1]

If a package is usually used as a dependency engines is not really helpful. I can't tell don't depend on it if you're running a different version of node. Using process.version works but it requires unnecessary work on my side. The new url module in iojs has a bug fix in resolve method. I wish I could use the new and fixed url module in all engines.

[mscdex]

@mohsen1 Why not just extract url.js from here and use it in your project then?

[brody4hire]

On Tuesday, September 8, 2015, Brian White notifications@github.com wrote:

@mohsen1 https://github.com/mohsen1 Why not just extract url.js from
here and use it in your project then?

+1 for your idea @mohsen1. The Cordova project did this starting with 3.0.

Sent from my mobile

[mohsen1]

I did use url.js from this repo here but copying over files is never a good idea!

[seishun]

I can't tell don't depend on it if you're running a different version of node.

Why not? Surely you don't expect people to use your module with e.g. Node.js 0.4? That's why READMEs usually mention which Node.js versions are supported.

[jasnell]

Closing since no discussion since october last year