Merge with node-serialport via bindings

[reconbot]

Hi Folks,
I'm working towards getting our c++ bindings isolated enough that we could switch out serialport implementations in an easier way. This could include the chrome serialport object. I think this is something to talk about because I'm going to be releasing some breaking changes to serialport to improve it's api and it's silly to implement everything twice. I'm thinking maybe we could merge projects.

I've opened serialport/node-serialport#739 to explore the option.

[garrows]

Awesome idea @reconbot! Let me know if I can help.

[reconbot]

yes! you very much can - I don't have a roadmap together yet, but the idea, is a minor bug release (With a major amount of bugs fixed), and then a major api change release, and then somewhere in there separating out and cleaning up the bindings. We could work chrome.serial in after the bug release I think.

[reconbot]

So I've got 4.0 in release candidate status. We can either bring those changes here or work to merge sooner than later.

The upgrade guide talks about the changes directly.

[djipco]

This would also allow for future support of the proposed WebSerial API.

[weiway]

It will be really nice to have a unified serial api for Javascript

[reconbot]

I've almost completed a spike on a chrome bindings object. I'm a lost on how to use the tests with it, but I'm almost there.

https://github.com/EmergingTechnologyAdvisors/node-serialport/compare/web

[reconbot]

I just want to poke this issue, the aforementioned branch is way out of date. However SerialPort 5 is about to be released. A binding interface for this would now be pretty strait forward to make but hard to test in a CI.

The project as a whole is not something I can take on at this time. However if anyone wants to give it a try I'd be available to support their efforts!

[garrows]

@reconbot thanks for the bump. I'm planning on reviving this repo next month and I'd love to do the merge.