Added support for node.js

[euforic]

• Place node binary in bin folder
• Place node app in node folder
• Name Main node file app.js
• Add macgap.nodejs.startServer(); to index.html
• Set meta refresh to url for node app (Can use index.html like a splash screen);

Just taught myself objective-c today so sorry if there are any noobs mistakes

[maccman]

Sorry, this is not going to be merged. I'm trying to keep macgap and lightweight as simple as possible (I've gone down this rabbit hole of combining servers client side with Bowline, and it didn't work out :( - http://github.com/maccman/bowline

[euforic]

That makes me sad :-( but I can completely understand where you are coming from. On a side note do you happend to know how I would quite the nstask on app exit using macgap ? Thanks again for taking a look at my code

[zippo445]

@maccman sorry to bother you with the 1 year old pull request of @euforic , but I was wondering if something might change your mind about not merging the node.js support to macGap....

I am currently working with node-webkit wich does something similar (it bundles node.js with chromium).
macgap+node.js would be a great alternative for osx releases (smaller binaries, better osx integration,easier to get pass appStore requirements). Is there any way the node.js support could be added as an optional feature?

nodejs binaries could be kept out of the source tree and added by developers only if required, avoiding to add extra bytes to the distribution of macgap... I think there is a good future for desktop app mixing html5 and node.js. it would be great to use macgap for that purpose.

thanks for the great work on macgap!

[jeff-h]

@zippo445 Would my feature request at https://github.com/maccman/macgap/issues/89 resolve this issue for you?

I think the ability to run shell commands would allow sufficient integration with node.js?

[jeff-h]

The Nodelike project (see https://github.com/node-app/Nodelike) provides a node.js-compatible API to web views, without requiring the V8 binary.

We've successfully combined Nodelike with MacGap, meaning javascript in MacGap now has access to both the usual MacGap API as well as the node.js API. The result is still very lightweight — my simple test app with both MacGap and Nodelike is 2 MB.

See: https://github.com/node-app/macgap for a pre-combined package of MacGap plus Nodelike https://github.com/node-app/Nodelike/wiki/How-to-integrate-Nodelike-with-MacGap

[zippo445]

hello jeff. thanks for the hint. I'll have a look into it. I've built some prototype with node-webkit as well but none of the solutions so far provide something viable for a commercial app (at least for what we are trying to do :) ) ended up have my own native apps (osx and win)