What's the difference between Node.js x86 and x64 installers for Windows?

Question

They both install node.exe into C:\Program Files (x86)... so I'm wondering what the actual difference is. I know that there is some because node-sqlserver module is failing on our machine and it does so in different ways for x86 and x64 versions of Node.

Can somebody explain the difference for me? Thanks.

Answer 1

The x64 installer installs the 64 bit version of node which is compiled against the 64 bit version of V8. The node-sqlserver package is a native module which means it needs to be compiled against the matching version of node. IE: It will fail if you are using a pre-compiled, 32 bit version of the module against the 64 bit version of node.

Other than the typical differences between 32 & 64 bit applications (larger address space, use of 8 bytes for addresses instead of 4 bytes), node doesn't differ between the two versions.