N-API version undefined on Windows, leading to TypeError: expected first argument to be an array

[Srdjan Boskovic]

Investigating the user issue node-rfc/#162, I am getting following error, on Windows only:

PS C:\src\node-rfc> prebuild --backend cmake-js -r napi --force --strip --verbose --tag-prefix
prebuild info begin Prebuild version 10.0.0
prebuild WARN This package does not support N-API version undefined
prebuild ERR! build TypeError: expected first argument to be an array
prebuild ERR! build     at each (C:\src\node-rfc\node_modules\each-series-async\index.js:21:8)
prebuild ERR! build     at Object.<anonymous> (C:\src\node-rfc\node_modules\prebuild\bin.js:50:3)
prebuild ERR! build     at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1151:30)
prebuild ERR! build     at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1171:10)
prebuild ERR! build     at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1000:32)
prebuild ERR! build     at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:899:14)
prebuild ERR! build     at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (internal/modules/run_main.js:71:12)
prebuild ERR! build     at internal/main/run_main_module.js:17:47

PS C:\src\node-rfc> npx envinfo --system --binaries
npx: installed 1 in 1.696s

  System:
    OS: Windows 10 10.0.18363
    CPU: (2) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7820HQ CPU @ 2.90GHz
    Memory: 1.46 GB / 4.00 GB
  Binaries:
    Node: 13.9.0 - C:\Tools\nvm-node\node.EXE
    npm: 6.13.7 - C:\Tools\nvm-node\npm.CMD

PS C:\src\node-rfc> prebuild -v
10.0.0

PS C:\src\node-rfc> cmake --version
cmake version 3.18.0

It just started happening on Windows, for to me unknown reason, working fine on Linux and Darwin.

To reproduce on Windows, clone the https://github.com/SAP/node-rfc master and run the above command.

[Vincent Weevers]

Side note (doesn't explain the issue at hand): --tag-prefix is not a boolean flag. It should either be --tag-prefix foo or left out altogether if your git tags are prefixed with the default "v".

[Vincent Weevers]

Can reproduce with node 12, but not with node 14. Which makes sense because node 12 and 13 don't support N-API 6, looking at this matrix: https://nodejs.org/api/n-api.html#n_api_n_api_version_matrix.

Can you downgrade to an earlier N-API version?

A PR is welcome to improve the error handling for this case. So that we exit before TypeError: expected first argument to be an array happens.

[Srdjan Boskovic]

Thank you very much @vweevers for the prompt response. I can't downgrade to N-API 5 but have to improve the documentation, mentioning that build from source works with N-API 6 node versions versions only. Will also remove the --tag-prefix leftover, thanks for the hint.