Auto update doesn't work: `app-update.yml` is missing

• Version: ^20.44.4

• electron-updater Version: ^4.0.14

• Target: --win --x64 NSIS

We noticed that auto-update doesn’t work on our newly released app. In our entry point we have:

import { autoUpdater } from "electron-updater";

// ...

autoUpdater.setFeedURL({
  provider: "github",
  owner: "org",
  repo: "repo",
});

• No publish config in package.json
• No GH_TOKEN
• built on GitLab’s CI
• the initial release didn’t have a latest.yml file

We don’t have logs about what the actual error might be. We did many tests before and after with the same and similar setups and it seems to work for the most part (even without publish config). Nevertheless, we managed to probably reproduce the issue by setting up dummy projects in the same environment and we got:

An update is available.
Error in auto-updater. Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open 'C:\Users\xyz\AppData\Local\Programs\electron-updater-example\resources\app-update.yml'

The main difference being the environment, and in this particular environment if the publish config is initially unset, app-update.yml was not found in the installed app. Most interestingly, after removing the publish config app-update.yml is still there.

To reproduce:

• release repo on github: https://github.com/gomorizsolt/electron-updater-releases/releases
• build repo on gitlab: https://gitlab.com/gomori.zsolt1995/electron-updater-test-project
• install 3.0.0, note that auto-update doesn’t work and app-update.yml is missing(build repo at 3.0.0: https://gitlab.com/gomori.zsolt1995/electron-updater-test-project/tree/f66d0bcd5b8912d3a9aa436cc74c4e546fe1bba4)
• install 3.0.1, note that auto-update works and app-update.yml is present (build repo at 3.0.1: https://gitlab.com/gomori.zsolt1995/electron-updater-test-project/tree/c0d81fd3f10512eff5bb88bb7ba2a0117bc56ad3)
• install 3.0.4 (which is supposed to revert the fixing change), note that auto-update works and app-update.yml is present (build repo at 3.0.4: https://gitlab.com/gomori.zsolt1995/electron-updater-test-project/tree/522cd15f0dd110d62705b99c9e019723a13628d4)

Found a few mentions about app-update.yml not being found, most notably: https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder/issues/2736#issuecomment-456380922

But it’s never clear anywhere whether this is a known bug or what’s causing it and why this behavior seemingly isn’t idempotent.

I’d like to understand how to fix it and whether we have any recourse for resurrecting auto-updates for existing users (in case there could be other reasons for this behavior).

[thisismydesign]

Don’t close this issue. This is an automatic message by Fresh - a bot against stale bots.

[xxczaki]

This issue still exists on electron-builder@^22.6.0, tested on Windows 10 Pro (latest) and Linux Mint 19.3. I tried everything, including using the not-recommended setFeedURL, but nothing seems to work.

Every time user launches my app they see:

Unhandled Promise Rejection Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/opt/APP_NAME/resources/app-update.yml'

I checked the folder and the only file there is app.asar.

cc @develar