Subject: [node] node-gyp dependent packages may not work correctly due to node-lts ld.so.cache

From: Abhishek Cherath <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2022 19:06:24 -0500

Hello,

This is a fairly involved bug report, the basic idea is that several npm 
packages depend on [node-gyp](https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-gyp), 
which is a build tool (written in python) that compiles native plugins 
for nodejs (so generally C/C++ code).

This tool uses the *system* C/C++ compiler, so on a guix system with 
gcc-toolchain, that would be gcc-12. this allows for the compilation and 
installation of these packages in node_modules fine. However, at runtime 
(which happens as `node program.js`) since the dynamic linker looks in 
the node-lts package's ld.so.cache, it tries to link against gcc-10's 
libstdc++.so.6, and errors out because of missing symbols.

To Reproduce, attempt the following (this isn't a particularly minimal 
example)
1.  guix shell --pure gcc-toolchain libuv mesa make python2 pkg-config 
libx11 libxext libxi node
2. cd <<SOME-DIR>>
3. CC=gcc npm i gl
4.  guix shell gcc-toolchain libuv mesa make python2 pkg-config libx11 
libxext libxi node
5. echo "var gl = require('gl')(64, 64, { preserveDrawingBuffer: true 
})" > test.js
6. node test.js

observe "ERR_DLOPEN_FAILED", with Error: 
/gnu/store/094bbaq6glba86h1d4cj16xhdi6fk2jl-gcc-10.3.0-lib/lib/libstdc++.so.6: 
version `GLIBCXX_3.4.29' not found

running with LD_DEBUG=all, shows that node-14.19.3's linked gcc's 
libstdc++ is used:

3608:     find library=libstdc++.so.6 [0]; searching
3608:      search 
cache=/gnu/store/mgxvqphymkf1xfz4zryppr1jwnd5xcyw-node-14.19.3/etc/ld.so.cache
3608:       trying 
file=/gnu/store/094bbaq6glba86h1d4cj16xhdi6fk2jl-gcc-10.3.0-lib/lib/libstdc++.so.6

I'm not really certain how one would go about solving this tbh, I'm 
planning to look a little deeper into how node-gyp decides what C++ 
compiler to use, might be a matter of setting some env vars or 
something? any ideas are appreciated.

Thank you,
Abhishek.