Hook for after electron.exe has completely finished being modified

• Version: 20.22.0

• Target: Windows

Description: Once Electron builder has finished modifying electron.exe into its final form I would like to apply some changes to the exe manually myself before it is code signed.

Currently I am carrying out these changes in the afterPack hook, however I think further changes to the exe are taking place by (or a dependency of) electron-builder after this hook has been triggered. I am assuming this because the final .exe file is corrupt and crashes with an Access Violation error.

If I move my .exe modifications a bit later in the build process (e.g. either by dumping them in the custom Windows code signing override/delegate function; or by running them manually after electron builder has completely finished) the .exe works as expected which points to electron-builder doing something to the .exe after the afterPack hook and before the code signing takes place. I have tried looking through the code but I cannot work out what changes take place in this timeframe.

As I would like to make use of the electron-builder code-signing functionality, I do not want to override the custom sign function and also cannot make my modifications after electron-builder has finished and the code has been signed. This means I need to try find (or implement) an alternative hook to carry out my tasks after the exe has been completely finished, but before the code signing takes place.

To help me with this, I have a few questions if anyone can give some guidance that would be fantastic:

• Does something happen to the .exe after afterPack or am I going down a rabbit hole? I had assumed at this stage the binary was completely finished but it doesn’t seem that way.
• Is there any other kind of hook I could hook into that represents “after the .exe is completely finished and won’t be touched again until code-signing”? I have obviously looked at the docs and not found one, but just wanted to ask incase anyone had any ideas or if I have missed something!
• If there isn’t such a hook, would you consider accepting a PR to implement one? E.g. maybe preCodeSign or afterPackFinalised? Obviously once I find out what (if anything) is happening to the exe after afterPack it would be easier to come up with a afterX hook name.

Just for the sake of completeness, I am making similar modifications to the Electron framework binary for OSX, however it doesn’t seem to suffer from this same issue and executing the changes from the afterPack hook is working.

[amfio]

afterSign unfortunately does not meet my needs, I need to carry out a task after the exe is in its final form but before code signing takes place. Effectively my hacked solution to this problem was to override the signing functionality but to then invoke the original signing function, e.g:

import * as windowsCodeSign from '../node_modules/electron-builder-lib/out/windowsCodeSign';
const originalSignFunction = windowsCodeSign.sign;

windowsCodeSign.sign = function(options) {
    const signFunctionContext = this;
    const signFunctionArgs = arguments;

    return doMyPostExeFunction().then(() => {
        return originalSignFunction.apply(signFunctionContext, signFunctionArgs);
    });
};

There is no longer active development on the app I required the functionally for, but I still think a hook for preSign to carry out tasks immediately before the signing process makes sense - or at least making it so that afterPack is truly after everything is done (e.g. after the .exe has been modified using rcedit). Obviously I am happy to submit a PR for this, I was just originally looking for clarification as to why additional modifications were taking place between the afterPack and the code signing process.

[develar]

@amfio Please use afterSign hook.