Custom builds of Node.js with V8 pointer compression enabled. Pointer compression shrinks V8 heap pointers from 8 bytes to 4 bytes, reducing heap memory usage significantly for applications with many heap-allocated objects.
Prebuilt binaries for all platforms are published as GitHub Releases. Each release is triggered manually via the "Build Node.js from Source" Actions workflow.
The build steps live in the reusable build.yaml workflow. Pull requests that touch the patches, scripts or build workflows start "Test Node.js build", which runs the same build on all platforms without uploading artifacts or publishing a release. Because a full build takes hours, each run waits for a maintainer to approve it (the test-build environment has required reviewers). It can also be started manually from the Actions tab.
All builds are configured with:
| Flag | Effect |
|---|---|
--experimental-enable-pointer-compression |
Compress V8 heap pointers from 8 → 4 bytes |
--experimental-pointer-compression-shared-cage |
Share the compression cage across Isolates in the same process |
--without-siphash |
Use a simpler alternative to SipHash for V8 hash seeds |
| Platform | Architecture | Runner |
|---|---|---|
| Linux | x64 | ubuntu-22.04 |
| Linux | arm64 | ubuntu-22.04-arm |
| macOS | x64 | macos-15-intel |
| macOS | arm64 | macos-15 (Apple Silicon) |
| Windows | x64 | windows-2025 |
| Windows | arm64 | windows-11-arm |
The builds apply a small set of patches, sourced from the Electron project, on top of the Node.js source tree, stored in patches/. These are necessary to make the pointer-compression build work:
support_v8_sandboxed_pointers— refactors several allocators to allocate within the V8 memory cage, required whenV8_SANDBOXED_POINTERSis active.random_build_flag_changes— enables the V8 sandbox (v8_enable_sandbox) when pointer compression is on, matching V8's expectations.api_remove_deprecated_getisolate— replaces a deprecatedcontext->GetIsolate()call withIsolate::GetCurrent(), required by newer V8.fix_hdr_histogram_build_with_clang_22_on_windows_x64— fixes a pointer type mismatch in the bundled HdrHistogram that ClangCL 22 (Visual Studio 2026) rejects on Windows x64. Already fixed in Node.jsmain(histogram 0.12.0); drop it once the built Node.js version includes that update.
cd node-src
vim some/code/file.cc
git commit
../script/git-export-patches -o ../patchesNote
git-export-patches ignores uncommitted files — create a commit first. The commit subject line becomes the patch file name; the body should explain why the patch exists.
Re-exporting patches may cause shasums in unrelated patches to change. This is harmless — include those changes in your PR anyway to keep things consistent for others.
./build.shThis clones Node.js at the pinned tag, applies all patches, configures with the pointer-compression flags, and installs the result into ./release/.