Electron deployed app not running, can't find module 'electron-reload'

Question

I'm learning Electron, so I'm using it for the first time ever by following this tutorial by DesignCourse. I constantly checked to make sure my code worked properly before proceeding. I can confirm that whenever I run it with npm start from the command prompt, it runs properly.

However, whenever I attempted to deploy it into an application that can be sent to others, I got a few errors. The biggest problem is that while the application was packaged, attempting to run the application gets me an error about a missing module 'electron-reload'. I have no idea how this module could have gone missing. I've linked an image of the error here. How can I fix this to get my application to run?

There's another related issue, too. When I first packaged the app, I had no errors at the time. But if I try to package the app again, I get this error about asar. I don't believe I changed anything else in my code between the first packaging and any subsequent attempts, except for a version number in my package.json file. Why is this error showing up now and not before?

EDIT: Woops, I forgot one little detail that might help! While I can run the app from the command prompt just fine, every time I do so I get an odd message. It says "Electron could not be found. No hard resets for you!", but the app still runs. Why is that?

Answer 1

About the electron-reload issue, you probably only want to use electron-reload when in the development environment. The way I do this is described below (the approach is one suggested by other people – I think I just changed a few things).

I don't know about the asar issue. The start issue may have to do with how your project directory is set up and/or the start script you are using.

---

In "package.json" – set an environment variable "APP_DEV" when calling "npm start":

  "scripts": {
    "start": "APP_DEV=true electron .",
    // other scripts deleted for clarity (package etc.)
  }

(more details on Node "process" and "process.env").

---

In "main.js" check for the environment variable "APP_DEV". If it exists (and is "true") then init electron-reload with the app directory and the path to the electron binary. The gist is that we only want to use electron-reload when in the development environment.

var isDev = process.env.APP_DEV ? (process.env.APP_DEV.trim() == "true") : false;

if (isDev) {
    require('electron-reload')(__dirname, {
        electron: path.join(__dirname, 'node_modules', '.bin', 'electron')
    });
}

Answer 2

As NG said, the issue was that I was trying to use electron-reload outside of a development environment. By simply removing the requirement of electron-reload, the program was able to successfully deploy and run as an application, without any of the three errors I shared in my question (Well, I still get a warning about asar not taking arguments, but the program gets successfully deployed this time). Big thanks to NG!