Issue with Electron Quick Start Guide

Question

Bonjour I use

• Win 10 (2004)
• node 12.16.3
• Chrome 85.0.4183.121
• Electron 10.1.5.
• npm 7.0.8

I follow instructions available here : https://www.electronjs.org/docs/tutorial/quick-start Everything works fine until paragraph : Package and distribute the application Indeed, the command :

npx @electron-forge/cli import

returns errors

PS C:\Users\phili\Documents\Temp\TestElectron2> npx @electron-forge/cli import
npm ERR! could not determine executable to run
npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     C:\Users\phili\AppData\Local\npm-cache\_logs\2020-11-08T10_52_07_011Z-debug.log

When I open the log file here is what I see

0 verbose cli [
0 verbose cli   'C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node.exe',
0 verbose cli   'C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\\npm-cli.js',
0 verbose cli   'exec',
0 verbose cli   '--',
0 verbose cli   '@electron-forge/cli',
0 verbose cli   'import'
0 verbose cli ]
1 info using [email protected]
2 info using [email protected]
3 timing config:load:defaults Completed in 1ms
4 timing config:load:file:C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\npmrc Completed in 2ms
5 timing config:load:builtin Completed in 2ms
6 timing config:load:cli Completed in 1ms
7 timing config:load:env Completed in 1ms
8 timing config:load:file:C:\Users\phili\Documents\Temp\TestElectron2\.npmrc Completed in 0ms
9 timing config:load:project Completed in 1ms
10 timing config:load:file:C:\Users\phili\.npmrc Completed in 0ms
11 timing config:load:user Completed in 0ms
12 timing config:load:file:C:\Users\phili\AppData\Roaming\npm\etc\npmrc Completed in 1ms
13 timing config:load:global Completed in 1ms
14 timing config:load:cafile Completed in 0ms
15 timing config:load:validate Completed in 0ms
16 timing config:load:setUserAgent Completed in 1ms
17 timing config:load:setEnvs Completed in 0ms
18 timing config:load Completed in 8ms
19 verbose npm-session ab6a58cdc10c9f54
20 timing npm:load Completed in 19ms
21 http fetch GET 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/@electron-forge%2fcli 1749ms (from cache)
22 timing command:exec Completed in 1768ms
23 verbose stack Error: could not determine executable to run
23 verbose stack     at getBinFromManifest (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\lib\exec.js:241:23)
23 verbose stack     at exec (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\lib\exec.js:158:15)
24 verbose cwd C:\Users\phili\Documents\Temp\TestElectron2
25 verbose Windows_NT 10.0.19041
26 verbose argv "C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node.exe" "C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\\npm-cli.js" "exec" "--" "@electron-forge/cli" "import"
27 verbose node v15.1.0
28 verbose npm  v7.0.8
29 error could not determine executable to run
30 verbose exit 1

I believe this is a beginner's issue. Can one of you guide me on the right path?

Best regards, 40tude

Answer 1

I had the same error.

I updated my npm ($ npm install -g npm@latest), and then, following the docs for NPM 7 here: https://www.electronforge.io/import-existing-project, the following two commands seemed to work (from project root):

$ npm install --save-dev @electron-forge/cli

$ npm exec --package=@electron-forge/cli -c "electron-forge import"

Answer 2

I ran into the same issue. I ended up just installing electron-forge and then running import without npx.

npm i -g @electron-forge/cli

electron-forge --version
6.0.0-beta.54

electron-forge import

Answer 3

Just to confirm; I was facing the same issue. As @AndyL has pointed out updating the npm version using npm install -g npm@latest did the trick

Answer 4

I was able to resolve it by:

npm add --include=dev @electron-forge/cli
npx electron-forge import

---

update:
replaced --dev with --include=dev as --dev is now deprecated (ref.: comment from @ManuelMB)

Answer 5

Check your NodeJS version (i had an old version and the same issue).

Only fix npm or try to install with npm i -g @electron-forge/cli won't work.

In my case I had to update NodeJS too.