Notes for making "black_magic" for node-browserify

gistfile1.md

any node package in the browser

browserify makes this possible for many modules, but the browser is a different environment (ex: no file system access) so we're going to need a few things if we want to run just anything:

1- browser versions of the native modules

• many are detailed here

• others like fs will need to be built:

• abandoned wip browser filesystem that writes to webkit storage (?)

• my attempt at an in-memory-only fs (ideally this would be used with "persistance adapters" and would hook into FSEventer) hack-in-progress

2- a way to get browserify use them

• current version of browserify ("2.17.3") uses browser-resolve "0.1.1" which supplies the builtins that were later removed

• you can manually add a browser fs implementation to that version of browser-resolve's /builtin/fs.js (to modify the core modules used by global browserify look here: /usr/local/share/npm/lib/node_modules/browserify/node_modules/browser-resolve/builtin )

• or you could get this branch of browserify that lets you specify global module overrides when bundling

3- a native-grade implementation of process

1 - some native modules also need extending
path.js is missing ["sep","exists","existsSync","_makeLong"]
presumably b/c they require the file-system

EDIT
["exists", "existsSync"] are deprecated
"sep" is just "/" (on this machine)
and "_makeLong" is function (path) {\n return path;\n } (on this machine)

so no biggy