Can not spawn Query Engine when using Electron

Problem

The ASAR file format is an archive used to package the source code and dependencies of an application in Electron. However in order to spawn the Query Engine binary, it has to be outside the ASAR archive, since ASAR archives are read-only and cannot spawn a separate process.

As a solution electron-builder provides a way to unpack or “move” these binaries out of the ASAR archive and into a different location.

However, this leads to a new problem. As the location of the Query Engine binary has changed to a different location, PrismaClient can no longer automatically detect the binary. In such cases, the path for the Query Engine binary needs to be manually passed to the PrismaClient during initialization in this way:

let prisma = new PrismaClient({
   __internal: {
    engine: {
      binaryPath: "/path/to/binary"
    }
  }
})

However, this API is currently not public and undocumented, making it difficult for usage by people outside of Prisma.

Suggested solution

Either of the following seem like acceptable solutions:

1. This API needs to be made public and documented. OR
2. Some provision needs to be added so that the PrismaClient can automatically locate the path to the unpacked Query Engine binary.

Existing Workaround: Use the private API for the moment.

Related Issues/Discussions:

• #9613
• #5200

[TasinIshmam]

Keeping the Prisma libraries binaries out of the ASAR archive using the extraResources configuration option that electron-builder provides seems to work fine. One possible drawback to this is the extra bundle size of the final applicaiton.

Notably, this works for both the new Node-API and the older rust binary. A while ago, I created a small example repo demonstrating how to do the above, I think it might be relevant to anyone facing this issue.

@madebysid @janpio sorry for the delay following up. Please feel free to take a look!

[janpio]

Ok, good to know the env vars would work. That is much more reasonable than using the internal API (or even making that public).

Yes the problem also applies here, as the Node-API also needs to be spawn'd.

There is no spawning happening for Node-API, only require: https://github.com/prisma/prisma/blob/main/packages/engine-core/src/library/LibraryEngine.ts (vs. https://github.com/prisma/prisma/blob/main/packages/engine-core/src/binary/BinaryEngine.ts) So would be good if we could verify if the Node-API library might even just work fine out of the box.