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setting cache-min to > 2^32 breaks node-gyp

See original GitHub issue

using node-gyp with some settings for cache-min crashes with an error.

I was setting cache-min to a large value, say, 9999999999 so that npm will install from the cache instead of going to the main registry, which slows down an install a lot if you have a slow internet connection, especially since most requests will just return 304 that your cached version is correct.

However, I get this error when installing a module that uses node-gyp

ValueError: Variable expansion in this context permits str and int only, found long for cache_min while trying to load binding.gyp

this just seemed like a weird error, and compilers do lots of weird things, but then I realized that my cache-min setting was larger than 2^32, although I don’t know why node-gyp would care about that, setting it to 999999999 (9 9’s) that works.

how does node-gyp use cache-min? is this a node-gyp bug or an npm bug?

full trace:

> chloridedown@1.0.22 install /home/dominic/c/scuttlebot/node_modules/chloridedown
> node-gyp rebuild

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/dominic/.nvm/versions/node/v5.6.0/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/gyp/gyp_main.py", line 16, in <module>
    sys.exit(gyp.script_main())
  File "/home/dominic/.nvm/versions/node/v5.6.0/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/gyp/pylib/gyp/__init__.py", line 545, in script_main
    return main(sys.argv[1:])
  File "/home/dominic/.nvm/versions/node/v5.6.0/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/gyp/pylib/gyp/__init__.py", line 538, in main
    return gyp_main(args)
  File "/home/dominic/.nvm/versions/node/v5.6.0/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/gyp/pylib/gyp/__init__.py", line 514, in gyp_main
    options.duplicate_basename_check)
  File "/home/dominic/.nvm/versions/node/v5.6.0/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/gyp/pylib/gyp/__init__.py", line 130, in Load
    params['parallel'], params['root_targets'])
  File "/home/dominic/.nvm/versions/node/v5.6.0/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/gyp/pylib/gyp/input.py", line 2775, in Load
    variables, includes, depth, check, True)
  File "/home/dominic/.nvm/versions/node/v5.6.0/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/gyp/pylib/gyp/input.py", line 417, in LoadTargetBuildFile
    build_file_data, PHASE_EARLY, variables, build_file_path)
  File "/home/dominic/.nvm/versions/node/v5.6.0/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/gyp/pylib/gyp/input.py", line 1214, in ProcessVariablesAndConditionsInDict
    variables, build_file, 'variables')
  File "/home/dominic/.nvm/versions/node/v5.6.0/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/gyp/pylib/gyp/input.py", line 1225, in ProcessVariablesAndConditionsInDict
    'only, found ' + expanded.__class__.__name__ + ' for ' + key)
ValueError: Variable expansion in this context permits str and int only, found long for cache_min while trying to load binding.gyp
gyp ERR! configure error 
gyp ERR! stack Error: `gyp` failed with exit code: 1
gyp ERR! stack     at ChildProcess.onCpExit (/home/dominic/.nvm/versions/node/v5.6.0/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/lib/configure.js:305:16)
gyp ERR! stack     at emitTwo (events.js:100:13)
gyp ERR! stack     at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:185:7)
gyp ERR! stack     at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (internal/child_process.js:200:12)
gyp ERR! System Linux 4.2.0-22-generic
gyp ERR! command "/home/dominic/.nvm/versions/node/v5.6.0/bin/node" "/home/dominic/.nvm/versions/node/v5.6.0/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/bin/node-gyp.js" "rebuild"
gyp ERR! cwd /home/dominic/c/scuttlebot/node_modules/chloridedown
gyp ERR! node -v v5.6.0
gyp ERR! node-gyp -v v3.2.1
gyp ERR! not ok