d daedalus

Node.js

Building a Node.js app

daedalus supports Node.js apps end-to-end. It detects a Node.js project by the presence of a package.json file, embeds the Node.js runtime with its shared libraries, and automatically handles node_modules when present.

Example: hello-node

A minimal Node.js HTTP server:

examples/hello-node/
├── app.js
└── package.json

app.js:

const http = require("http");
const port = parseInt(process.env.PORT || "8080", 10);

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
  res.writeHead(200, { "Content-Type": "text/plain" });
  res.end(`Hello from daedalus + Node.js ${process.version}\n");
});

server.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`Server listening on http://127.0.0.1:${port}`);
});

package.json:

{
  "name": "hello-node",
  "main": "app.js"
}

Build it:

daedalus build ./examples/hello-node -o hello-node.de

Run it:

./hello-node.de
# Server listening on http://127.0.0.1:8080

With dependencies (node_modules)

If your app has npm dependencies, they must be installed first (npm install) so that node_modules/ exists in the project directory. daedalus automatically detects it and sets NODE_PATH inside the extracted rootfs.

cd my-node-app
npm install express
daedalus build . -o my-app.de

The build output will confirm:

app layer: node_modules from /path/to/my-node-app/node_modules

How it works

  1. detect.rs detects package.json and finds the node binary on $PATH
  2. The ELF analyzer resolves all shared libraries the Node.js runtime depends on (~18 .so files)
  3. The interpreter + .so files + /etc form the runtime layer (cached)
  4. App code + node_modules form the app layer (rebuilt on every change)
  5. The launcher sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH and NODE_PATH, then execvps node

Known limitations

  • Native addons (.node files) are bundled but their transitive .so dependencies are not yet auto-detected. This works for most JS-only packages.
  • Node.js v18+ is tested. The runtime layer caches per exact binary version.
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