installer hangs up when building for win32/ia32 from OS X

I build my project with electron-forge which uses windows-installer with squirrel target to create an executable installer. But the process hangs up when it comes to electron-windows-installer spawning mono. I build for win32 with 32-bit architecture from my Mac.

Here is the Output from the console:

Making for the following targets:
  electron-forge:hook could not find hook: preMake +1ms
  electron-forge:lifecycle Process Started: Making for target: squirrel - On platform: win32 - For arch: ia32 +3ms
  electron-windows-installer:main Using Mono: 'mono' +0ms
  electron-windows-installer:main Using Wine: 'wine' +0ms
  electron-windows-installer:fs-utils Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, stat '/Users/.../Projekte/xprintor/out/xprintor-win32-ia32/resources/app.asar' +10ms
  electron-windows-installer:main Created NuSpec file:
  electron-windows-installer:main <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  electron-windows-installer:main <package xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/packaging/2010/07/nuspec.xsd">
  electron-windows-installer:main   <metadata>
  electron-windows-installer:main     <id>xprintor</id>
  electron-windows-installer:main     <title>xprintor</title>
  electron-windows-installer:main     <version>0.0.1</version>
  electron-windows-installer:main     <authors>author</authors>
  electron-windows-installer:main     <owners>owner</owners>
  electron-windows-installer:main     <iconUrl>https://raw.githubusercontent.com/atom/electron/master/atom/browser/resources/win/atom.ico</iconUrl>
  electron-windows-installer:main     <requireLicenseAcceptance>false</requireLicenseAcceptance>
  electron-windows-installer:main     <description>description</description>
  electron-windows-installer:main     <copyright>copyright</copyright>
  electron-windows-installer:main   </metadata>
  electron-windows-installer:main   <files>
  electron-windows-installer:main     <file src="locales/**" target="lib/net45/locales" />
  electron-windows-installer:main     <file src="resources/**" target="lib/net45/resources" />
  electron-windows-installer:main     <file src="*.bin" target="lib/net45" />
  electron-windows-installer:main     <file src="*.dll" target="lib/net45" />
  electron-windows-installer:main     <file src="*.pak" target="lib/net45" />
  electron-windows-installer:main     <file src="Update.exe" target="lib/net45/squirrel.exe" />
  electron-windows-installer:main     <file src="icudtl.dat" target="lib/net45/icudtl.dat" />
  electron-windows-installer:main     <file src="LICENSE" target="lib/net45/LICENSE" />
  electron-windows-installer:main     <file src="xprintor.exe" target="lib/net45/xprintor.exe" />
  electron-windows-installer:main   </files>
  electron-windows-installer:main </package>
  electron-windows-installer:main  +3ms
  electron-windows-installer:spawn Spawning mono /usr/local/lib/node_modules/electron-forge/node_modules/electron-winstaller/vendor/nuget.exe pack /var/folders/2s/f7qmqftd5k33679ljspvvd4m0000gn/T/si-1171122-17147-169zb4k.alwhg/xprintor.nuspec -BasePath /Users/.../Projekte/xprintor/out/xprintor-win32-ia32 -OutputDirectory /var/folders/2s/f7qmqftd5k33679ljspvvd4m0000gn/T/si-1171122-17147-169zb4k.alwhg -NoDefaultExcludes +21ms

There is nothing special with my electron windows installer config:

  "config": {
    "forge": {
      "make_targets": {
        "win32": [
          "squirrel"
        ],
        "darwin": [
          "zip",
          "dmg"
        ],
        "linux": [
          "deb",
          "rpm"
        ]
      },
      "electronPackagerConfig": {
        "dir": "src",
        "ignore": [
          ".gitignore",
          ".idea",
          "tsconfig.json",
          "tslint.json",
          "README.md",
          "dev.env"
        ]
      },
      "electronWinstallerConfig": {
        "name": "<%= productName %>",
        "outputDirectory": "release"
      },
      "electronInstallerDebian": {},
      "electronInstallerRedhat": {},
      "github_repository": {
        "owner": "",
        "name": ""
      },
      "windowsStoreConfig": {
        "packageName": "com.example.<%= name %>"
      }
    }
  }

[georgemcg]

For me, if I add the flag: "asar": true to electronPackagerConfig (if you’re using forge, don’t know otherwise) then it finishes in a couple of minutes, down from an hour.

This old issue helped: https://github.com/electron/windows-installer/issues/55

[jdurand]

It’s reasonable to think that using asar fixes some issues with path names that could be too long for the Windows/Mono/Wine build step… I’m just speculating here. References:

• https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-packager/blob/f1787401a67f5e27a453100f881d7bdf3e15dad6/docs/api.md#asar
• https://electronjs.org/docs/tutorial/application-packaging