node-gyp on windows problem with UnicodeDecodeError

solution.md

node-gyp on windows problem with UnicodeDecodeError

Reason

• node-gyp writen in python
• python have 2 mode for work with strings - unicode and ascii
• node-gyp use ascii mode
• windows use utf-8 for paths
• python throw UnicodeDecodeError for chars out of range 0..127 (Cyrillic chars for example)

Stacktrace example

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\node-gyp\gyp\gyp_main.py", line 50, in <module>
    sys.exit(gyp.script_main())
  File "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\node-gyp\gyp\pylib\gyp\__init__.py", line 554, in script_main
    return main(sys.argv[1:])
  File "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\node-gyp\gyp\pylib\gyp\__init__.py", line 547, in main
    return gyp_main(args)
  File "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\node-gyp\gyp\pylib\gyp\__init__.py", line 532, in gyp_main
    generator.GenerateOutput(flat_list, targets, data, params)
  File "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\node-gyp\gyp\pylib\gyp\generator\msvs.py", line 2019, in GenerateOutput         File "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\node-gyp\gyp\pylib\gyp\generator\msvs.py", line 954, in _GenerateProject          return _GenerateMSBuildProject(project, options, version, generator_flags)
  File "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\node-gyp\gyp\pylib\gyp\generator\msvs.py", line 3400, in _GenerateMSBuildProject
    easy_xml.WriteXmlIfChanged(content, project.path, pretty=True, win32=True)
  File "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\node-gyp\gyp\pylib\gyp\easy_xml.py", line 123, in WriteXmlIfChanged
    xml_string = xml_string.encode(encoding)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc4 in position 2691: ordinal not in range(128)

Solution

• Exclude dirs with non latin chars
• node-gyp use os home dir for store node C headers, change it:

npm config set --global devdir D:\node-gyp

Thanks!

Thank you!

when use this config set:
C:\impc\imcppaddon>if not defined npm_config_node_gyp (node "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm\node_modules\npm-lifecycle\node-gyp-bin\....\node_modules\node-gyp\bin\node-gyp.js" rebuild ) else (node "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm\node_modules\node-gyp\bin\node-gyp.js" rebuild )
gyp WARN install got an error, rolling back install
gyp ERR! configure error
gyp ERR! stack Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, mkdir 'D:'
gyp ERR! System Windows_NT 10.0.19045
gyp ERR! command "C:\Program Files (x86)\nodejs\node.exe" "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm\node_modules\node-gyp\bin\node-gyp.js" "rebuild"
gyp ERR! cwd C:\impc\imcppaddon
gyp ERR! node -v v14.19.2
gyp ERR! node-gyp -v v5.1.0
gyp ERR! not ok

when use this config set: C:\impc\imcppaddon>if not defined npm_config_node_gyp (node "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm\node_modules\npm-lifecycle\node-gyp-bin....\node_modules\node-gyp\bin\node-gyp.js" rebuild ) else (node "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm\node_modules\node-gyp\bin\node-gyp.js" rebuild ) gyp WARN install got an error, rolling back install gyp ERR! configure error gyp ERR! stack Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, mkdir 'D:' gyp ERR! System Windows_NT 10.0.19045 gyp ERR! command "C:\Program Files (x86)\nodejs\node.exe" "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\npm\node_modules\node-gyp\bin\node-gyp.js" "rebuild" gyp ERR! cwd C:\impc\imcppaddon gyp ERR! node -v v14.19.2 gyp ERR! node-gyp -v v5.1.0 gyp ERR! not ok

@stefanJi your system probably doesn't have disk D:
Try to use another path for devdir parameter.