fix(gatsby-plugin-sharp): bail early if sharp isn't working

[sidharthachatterjee]

We've seen several issues where builds break because gatsby-plugin-sharp fails for some reason.

Typically because sharp didn't build correctly during install like in #10620 most likely due to an incorrect version of python

From https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp

python (v2.7 recommended, v3.x.x is not supported)

This PR adds a try-catch around requiring sharp and bails early if it fails

[sidharthachatterjee]

Deleting node_modules/sharp/build/Release/sharp.node and running gatsby develop fails with an error message

Need to

• add link to a docs page explaining how to resolve this on different platforms

[pieh]

I think we should also list some options that user can do to fix this:

• try to reinstall packages and look for errors during installation
• consult sharp installation page: http://sharp.pixelplumbing.com/en/stable/install/

[DSchau]

Good idea! Left a comment, we have to remember to offer advice/info as to how to fix the issue if we're going to throw early like this.

[DSchau]

Can we add some additional info here?

This doesn't seem like it'd be any more useful to a user as they go through debugging why this error is triggered?

e.g.

reporter.panic(
  reporter.stripIndent`
    The dependency "sharp" does not seem to have been built or installed correctly.
    Check out this guide for more info: https://gatsby.app/sharp-installation-issues
  `
)

[DSchau]

(also note the link doesn't--and probably shouldn't--be something we maintain)

[sidharthachatterjee]

Oh absolutely, I left a TODO there to add them

I'll add these right after testing this on ubuntu 14.04 (that was the environment in the original issue)

Thanks for the comment!

[polarathene]

In my case on alpine linux, building libvips for sharp was problematic. It's only available as a package in the edge repos, and compatibility to use that from stable release repos is unreliable(some existing alpine gatsby images ran into this issue with recent builds). Instead the alpine images are better off being built on either edge base or stable with node 8 or 10 where the sharp npm package supports pulling in binaries for many platforms/distro instead of trying to build from source. If a user decides to use current latest node v11 they'll probably miss out on the benefit of the binary support on v8 or v10, could be worth pointing out(the sharp npm package repo points this out though in their docs).

Still, in some cases I've run into the problem of running gatsby develop and even with the sharp.node file in a place an error states it could not locate the file, I was able to resolve it by adding bindings.js package to my package.json. It's a helper for finding bindings, might be worth mentioning too.

Only other issue I've run into is the supporting packages for jpeg/webp/png, but I think this is specific to alpine again and I need to look into it. I recall some errors, specifically I think mozjpeg failed to install, it built correctly but couldn't run autoconf(or similar filename, can't recall), if it's meant to be a package alpine doesn't seem to have it. When using local images and requesting fluid with webp fragment in graphql, my source jpeg files caused errors due to not being able to use mozjpeg. When I get time I'll investigate that further(if alpine specific will contribute that to the gatsby docker repo where a gatsby-cli docker container is in a current PR).

[sidharthachatterjee]

Added better error messaging for this and asserted that it works fine if sharp.node isn't available due to a bad install. Wasn't able to reproduce it on Ubuntu 14.04 though (everything worked fine).

Nonetheless, this should be good to go for now.

[sidharthachatterjee]

This renders the following

success open and validate gatsby-configs — 0.046 s
success load plugins — 1.688 s
⠁
      The dependency "sharp" does not seem to have been built or installed correctly.

      - Try to reinstall packages and look for errors during installation
      - Consult "sharp" installation page at http://sharp.pixelplumbing.com/en/stable/install/

      If neither of the above work, please open an issue in https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/issues

[pieh]

We were pairing on this and tried multiple ways to break installation of sharp package (without much success). Best we can do is to manually broke it afterwards and this message works for that case.

This is better than nothing and provide some context early without displaying cascade of errors that are caused by faulty sharp installation but also confusing as they hide root problem.