Cannot use npm package in Github Actions

[y-nk]

When running rustywind as installed from npm (npm i -g rustywind), it works locally but once in the regular github runner, we can witness this:

Run pnpm format:check

> ongo@1.4.0 format:check /home/runner/work/repo-name
> rustywind --check-formatted $INIT_CWD

sh: 1: rustywind: Exec format error
 ELIFECYCLE  Command failed with exit code 126.

any idea what could be wrong there?

[praveenperera]

Taking a look, haven’t had this issue personally before.

[praveenperera]

@y-nk seems like a cache issue it’s trying to use a rustywind binary that was installed for a different architecture

[y-nk]

that's what i figured. but it's unlikely to happen from pnpm. could it be a problem with the binaries and/or the manifests?

[praveenperera]

I don’t think it’s an issue in the package. Are you using rustywind in different GitHub workflows on multiples arch’s while using a cache?

[b0o]

Same issue here, on Arch Linux (not GitHub actions). It seems the binary published to NPM is compiled for Apple Silicon:

$ npm install rustywind
$ file ./node_modules/rustywind/bin/rustywind
./node_modules/rustywind/bin/rustywind: Mach-O 64-bit arm64 executable, flags:<NOUNDEFS|DYLDLINK|TWOLEVEL|PIE|HAS_TLV_DESCRIPTORS>
$ uname -srmo
Linux 6.18.1-arch1-2 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[b0o]

I figured out the issue on my system. I've got npm lifecycle scripts disabled globally for security, ~/.npmrc:

ignore-scripts=true

This prevented rustywind's install script from firing, which is responsible for downloading the correct binary for the current platform:

rustywind/npm/package.json

Line 8 in 6c34a62

"install": "node ./lib/postinstall.js || npm run prepack",

Normally, I probably would have caught this because I'd get rustywind: command not found, but the rustywind package published to NPM ships with a single pre-compiled executable for Apple Silicon (instead of no executable at all), which confused me.

To fix the issue, I created a project-level .npmrc:

ignore-scripts=false

Then rm -rf node_modules and re-install with npm i. Then, rustywind should work.

Side note: I also had this issue with Bun. Bun actually disables lifecycle scripts by default. But with Bun, there's an even better way to allow the script to run: you can enable scripts just for a specific dependency with trustedDependencies in package.json:

{
  // ...
  "devDependencies": {
    "rustywind": "^0.24.3"
  },
  "trustedDependencies": ["rustywind"]
}

The situation is similar with pmpm, which started blocking lifecycle scripts by default in v10: https://github.com/pnpm/pnpm/releases/tag/v10.0.0

You should be able to add this to your package.json to get it working with pnpm:

{
  "devDependencies": {
    "rustywind": "^0.24.3"
  },
  "pnpm": {
    "onlyBuiltDependencies": ["rustywind"]
  }
}

[y-nk]

i'll try this. thanks a ton @b0o

[b0o]

Sure! Also note it might be a bit different if you're installing rustywind globally rather than project-local, but I think the same idea applies.