add msvs 2017 support

[dothebart]

No description provided.

[richardlau]

Based on #1952 (comment) this isn't necessary? cc @joaocgreis

[dothebart]

after opening the PR I saw that these changes already there in GYP3. However, as long as you use the node-gyp this is needed.

[joaocgreis]

This shouldn't be needed, VS detection is not done by GYP but in https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp/blob/master/lib/find-visualstudio.js.

@dothebart what issue did you see that needs this? Is the detection in node-gyp not working for you? Can you paste the output of a failing node-gyp rebuild --verbose here?

[dothebart]

Ah, I don't compile V8 for nodejs - its https://github.com/ArangoDB/ArangoDB - so I don't have this file.
I now continued with gyp3, which has this. So if you don't want it, close it.

[joaocgreis]

I guess we'll have to land something like this or remove autodetection from the GYP side, but I'd rather wait until we figure out how GYP will be managed here. @dothebart thanks for opening this PR and trying to help.

[dothebart]

hm, asking a heretic question - how do you run .js before having a ready compiled V8?

[joaocgreis]

I'm not sure I understand your question... Here in node-gyp, Node.js is required to run, so V8 is always already compiled.

For compiling Node.js itself in https://github.com/nodejs/node/ a different mechanism is used. It uses vswhere from the command line: https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/ed401236f6988c6ad62a21dbbf808da83782bee0/vcbuild.bat#L247

[dothebart]

ah, nice. a shellscript to tell the environment autodetection infrastructure about the infrastructure to work around the autodetection.
Is Gyp3 the way ahead?

[joaocgreis]

There's discussion about the way forward in #1791. There was a PR to change to GYP3 #1845 but it was closed. From what I see, it looks like we'll be maintaining GYP here specifically to be used in node-gyp at least for a while.