capacitor:add @capacitor-community/electron fails on BigSur

Problem

Today I tried to install the @capacitor-community/electron package. The installation works fine at first, but when I try to “npx cap add @capacitor-community/electron” I get the following error:

> @capacitor-community/electron@1.3.2 capacitor:add
> node dist/cap-scripts.js add

✖ Adding Electron platform: The "path" argument must be of type string. Received undefined
node:internal/process/promises:225
          triggerUncaughtException(err, true /* fromPromise */);
          ^

TypeError [ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE]: The "path" argument must be of type string. Received undefined
    at new NodeError (node:internal/errors:278:15)
    at validateString (node:internal/validators:123:11)
    at Object.join (node:path:1039:7)
    at Object.i [as getCwd] (/Users/user/project/node_modules/@capacitor-community/electron/dist/cap-scripts.js:2:521)
    at a (/Users/user/project/node_modules/@capacitor-community/electron/dist/cap-scripts.js:6:197)
    at Object.n [as doAdd] (/Users/user/project/node_modules/@capacitor-community/electron/dist/cap-scripts.js:6:960)
    at /Users/user/project/node_modules/@capacitor-community/electron/dist/cap-scripts.js:12:363
    at Object.g [as runTask] (/Users/user/project/node_modules/@capacitor-community/electron/dist/cap-scripts.js:2:1902)
    at i (/Users/user/project/node_modules/@capacitor-community/electron/dist/cap-scripts.js:12:311)
    at /Users/user/project/node_modules/@capacitor-community/electron/dist/cap-scripts.js:12:718 {
  code: 'ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE'
}
npm ERR! code 1
npm ERR! path /Users/user/project/node_modules/@capacitor-community/electron
npm ERR! command failed
npm ERR! command sh -c node dist/cap-scripts.js add

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!    /Users/user/.npm/_logs/2020-12-11T06_57_03_068Z-debug.log

Environment

• MacOS BigSur 11.0.1
• @capacitor/cli version: 2.4.4
• @capacitor/core version 2.4.4

[ri0t]

Aye, updating npm to 7.3 resolved the above issue. Now it claims, it couldn’t find capacitor.config.json - which is exactly where it should be 😃 Edit: In other words, from my side: this might necessitate a hint in the docs, but for me this issue can be closed.

[kanatzidis]

I experienced this too. For me, it was because I was running an old version of node/npm that did not yet support the INIT_CWD env var (introduced in v5.4.0). This was causing this line to fail because it’s passed undefined, which ts doesn’t catch because it’s asserted as non-null.

@michi7801 didn’t post their npm version so I can’t be 100% sure, but I’d bet this is the problem @ri0t is experiencing as well because the variable was accidentally removed in npm v7 and only re-added in v7.1.2.

Updating my npm locally allowed cap add to run successfully.