I have never built software from source, so forgive my complete ignorance on this subject. I was trying to determine what the difference would be between installing Node.js from the OS X Installer pkg vs unzipping the 64-bit binaries file (from the Node.js downloads page) and moving to /usr/local/ (then making sure permissions are correct, of course.) Below is the output from running a diff between the unzipped binaries directory path [binaries] and the installation path [install].
Can someone please explain what test files are, as well as the other differences in doing what I described above? Using the output to explain would be helpful to me.
Only in [binaries]: ChangeLog
Only in [binaries]: LICENSE
Only in [binaries]: README.md
Binary files [binaries]/bin/node and [install]/bin/node differ
diff -r [binaries]/bin/npm [install]/bin/npm
1,2c1
< #!/bin/sh
< // 2>/dev/null; exec "`dirname "$0"`/node" "$0" "$@"
---
> #!/usr/bin/env node
diff -r [binaries]/include/node/config.gypi [install]/include/node/config.gypi
10c10
< 'node_prefix': '/',
---
> 'node_prefix': '',
diff -r [binaries]/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js
1,2c1
< #!/bin/sh
< // 2>/dev/null; exec "`dirname "$0"`/node" "$0" "$@"
---
> #!/usr/bin/env node
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/ansicolors: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/ansistyles: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/block-stream: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/char-spinner: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/child-process-close: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/chmodr: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/cmd-shim: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/columnify/node_modules/wcwidth: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/fstream-npm/node_modules/fstream-ignore: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/github-url-from-username-repo: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/glob: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/graceful-fs: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/ini: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/init-package-json/node_modules/promzard: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/init-package-json: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/lockfile: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/lru-cache: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/minimatch/node_modules/sigmund: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/minimatch: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/mkdirp/node_modules/minimist: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/mkdirp: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/nopt: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npm-install-checks: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npm-registry-client: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npm-user-validate: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npmconf/node_modules/config-chain/node_modules/proto-list: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npmconf/node_modules/config-chain: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npmconf: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npmlog: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/once: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/osenv: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read/node_modules/mute-stream: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-installed: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json/node_modules/normalize-package-data: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/request/node_modules/bl: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/request/node_modules/form-data/node_modules/combined-stream/node_modules/delayed-stream: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/request/node_modules/hawk/node_modules/boom: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/request/node_modules/hawk/node_modules/cryptiles: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/request/node_modules/hawk/node_modules/hoek: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/request/node_modules/hawk/node_modules/sntp: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/request/node_modules/hawk: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/request/node_modules/node-uuid: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/request/node_modules/qs: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/retry: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/rimraf: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/semver: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/tar: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/text-table: test
Only in [install]/lib/node_modules/npm: test
Since pre-build binaries can be tested before being deployed (zipped), they don't have to include the tests in the zip to test it again after download.
The OS X (universal) installer will do various checks and depending on your system it will compile/download/install different files, depending on your system setup.
After the various steps it will verify the installed files using the test files, which basically contain a bit of programming so that node is able to understand how it can test the actual file.
The OS X binaries however have basically already been "installed" (on a building machine) and then just zipped up.
something build on OS X will work on all OS X's having a similar system build
If you compile/build the code yourself however, testing it can be quite useful to detect potential build errors.
The other small changes would have to do with the (slightly) different way the application was compiled/build on your system, in comparison to their build system.
The binary differences seem to only be the declaration (on the binaries file) that it's a shell application, followed by a commented-out line. the node_prefix value seems to be only used by the installer according to this github issue comment