nodejs/node-gyp

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

10685 stars · 1878 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

node-gyp is a cross-platform command-line tool for compiling native addon modules for Node.js, built on a vendored copy of gyp-next. It downloads the appropriate Node.js headers and drives the platform build toolchain (make/GCC, Xcode/clang, or Visual Studio).

Use cases

• compile a native C++ addon for Node.js
• build node-gyp modules on Windows with Visual Studio
• target a specific Node.js version when building native addons
• install a package with native bindings from npm
• cross-platform build configuration for Node native modules

When to choose

• you are developing or installing Node.js native addons written in C/C++
• you need to build against multiple Node.js versions or platforms
• your npm package ships native code and needs a standard build tool

When to avoid

• you only write pure JavaScript/TypeScript with no native dependencies
• you want to build Node.js itself (node-gyp does not do that)
• you prefer N-API packages with prebuilt binaries that skip compilation

Facets

cli-tool · maturity stable

build-tool cli compiler developer-tools backend cross-platform cli cross-platform windows node-addon gyp native-modules c-plus-plus npm nodejs linux macos

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