1. Prerequisties

Install node-gyp build tools

There are a lot of node modules those require C/C++ compilation while installing them. For improved performance, some modules are written partially in C/C++ and make calls directly to the Node runtime (V8). Such modules are called native modules that are needed to re-built on user's machine. For example node-ffi is a native module that I needed once to link a C++ DLL file in my react application.

To build or compile these modules, we need to install node-gyp on our dev machine. node-gyp is a cross-platform command-line tool written in Node.js for compiling native addon modules for Node.js.

Before installing actual node-gyp, you will have to setup a few things in respective OS first:

On Windows

Install all the required tools and configurations using Microsoft's windows-build-tools using npm install --global --production windows-build-tools from an elevated PowerShell or CMD.exe (run as Administrator).

On Ubuntu

1. First of all, install the "make" build tool in Ubuntu with the following commands:

sudo apt-get update && \
sudo apt-get install build-essential software-properties-common -y;

2. Then you need to install the a proper C/C++ compiler toolchain. We will be installing GCC here with the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test -y && \
sudo apt-get update && \
sudo apt-get install gcc-snapshot -y && \
sudo apt-get update && \
sudo apt-get install gcc-6 g++-6 -y && \
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-6 60 --slave 
/usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-6 && \
sudo apt-get install gcc-4.8 g++-4.8 -y && \
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.8 60 --slave 
/usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.8;

3. Install python 2.7 version. (Note: Python 3 is not supported by node-gyp).

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install python2.7 python-pip

Finally install the main module with the following command:

npm install -g node-gyp

Installing all the above things will put your mind on ease while developing an electron app which requires at least one native module and obviously if you are building a desktop app, it will require communication with some operating system components and most of them are written as native dependencies.