Starting electron application with electron-builder start

• Version: 20.8.0

• Target: macOS, Windows

Currently we can publish binaries for Windows and macOS with electron-builder. During development we start our application with electron ./PATH_TO_MAIN.js and would like to switch to electron-builder start, since it would consider all the configuration from our electron-builder.json.

Unfortunately we are getting following error with both os (window and macOS)

Error: Cannot find module 'electron-webpack/dev-runner'
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:547:15)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:474:25)
    at Module.require (module.js:596:17)
    at require (internal/module.js:11:18)
    at start (/ROOT_PATH/node_modules/electron-builder/out/cli/start.js:10:3)
    at _yargs.default.command.command.command.command.command.wrap (/ROOT_PATH/node_modules/electron-builder/out/cli/cli.js:148:239)
    at then (/ROOT_PATH/node_modules/electron-builder/out/cli/cli.js:153:97)
From previous event:
    at runCallback (timers.js:794:20)
    at tryOnImmediate (timers.js:752:5)
    at processImmediate [as _immediateCallback] (timers.js:729:5)
From previous event:
    at Object.args [as handler] (/ROOT_PATH/node_modules/electron-builder/out/cli/cli.js:153:86)
    at Object.runCommand (/ROOT_PATH/node_modules/electron-builder/node_modules/yargs/lib/command.js:235:44)
    at Object.parseArgs [as _parseArgs] (/ROOT_PATH/node_modules/electron-builder/node_modules/yargs/yargs.js:1014:30)
    at Object.get [as argv] (/ROOT_PATH/node_modules/electron-builder/node_modules/yargs/yargs.js:957:21)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/ROOT_PATH/node_modules/electron-builder/out/cli/cli.js:148:373)
    at Module._compile (module.js:652:30)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:663:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:565:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (module.js:505:12)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:497:3)
    at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:693:10)
    at startup (bootstrap_node.js:188:16)
    at bootstrap_node.js:609:3

We tried it already with different versions of electron-webpack (1.11.0 , 1.13.0 and 2.0.0)

Does anyone else encounter this problem?

[jordanbtucker]

@develar I think you’re missing the point. The documentation for electron-builder lists a start command that doesn’t work, even if you are using electron-webpack.

I tracked down the code, and as you can see, it requires electron-webpack/dev-runner, which isn’t a valid path. So, you should at best fix the code so it works, or at the very least remove the start command and documentation around it.

The correct path is electron-webpack/out/dev/dev-runner, but as far as I can tell, electron-webpack does not expose a supported public API that you can use to run it outside of the CLI. So if you don’t use the CLI, then you risk running into internal changes that break your code.

[develar]

electron-builder start is supposed to be used with electron-webpack. You don’t need to use it if you use another framework. Use whatever you want to start app in a dev mode 😃