At https://github.com/versatica/mediasoup/pull/777 (the lucky number :-D) I’ve published a PR that allows to create and use prebuild images of mediasoup, not needing to compile it at install on the target platform. This is done by compiling the Worker executables in advance for multiple platforms, and bundling them in the distributed package.

Prebuilds are being compiled using Github Actions. Currently it’s being configured to be able to launch the workflow by hand, but also to do it when a new tag with the format v* (the same format used by npm version command) is being created. The tag-based dispatch has not been fully tested, so maybe it needs to be improved on the next release, but it’s just a matter of configuration. Any suggestion on this topic is welcome.

To support the Worker executables for the multiple platforms inside the package, their location has been changed so their operating system and CPU architecture is included in their path, similar to how other similar solutions like prebuildify works. In fact, I’ve used prebuildify as inspiration for this PR.

For simplicity, prebuilds are compiled using three different jobs running in parallel, one for each one of the operating systems supported by Github Actions (Ubuntu Linux, macOS and Windows), and stored as artifacts. Alternatively I could have been able to use a build matrix so jobs steps are not duplicated, this can be a future improvement. Later, the artifacts with the Worker executables are being collected and placed in the path they would be located, if they would have been compiled at install time at their target platform. Finally, the package is published on Github Packages Registry or npmjs, depending of the provided credentials.

Currently Github Actions only support x86_64 CPU architecture, so to compile for Apple Silicon M1 CPU, we would need to configure the job compiling for macOS to cross compile to arm64 and have multiple builds, or generate an universal binary. This last solution is more elegant, but later we would need to support the selection of the universal binary when searching for the prebuilds, so it would make it more complex. Cross-compiling to arm64 is complex too, so until there’s support for arm64 macOS VMs on Github Actions, only solutions are to have your own self-hosted arm64 macOS runner (there are some other recipes to achieve that on internet, too), or compile it yourself in your local machine and download, update and reload the published package generated by Github Actions. This last alternative will only works on Github Packages Registry, since for security reasons, npmjs doesn’t allow to publish a package with the same version number of a previously published one, also if it has been removed and we want to replace it.

The other half of the solution is the install of the prebuilds in the target platform. It just only checks what’s the platform at install time, and check if there’s a prebuild image for it. If it doesn’t exists (like macOS on Apple Silicon M1, as said before), as a fallback it will compile the package as usual. Finally, at runtime the package checks again for the running platform, and search again for a Worker executable for that platform from the available ones, being this one both a prebuild, or one just ad-hoc compiled at install time.