Botframework-emulator: Bot Framework Emulator failed to run when an existing NODE_OPTIONS environment variable

[xiaoyunwei]

Version

BotFramework-Emulator-4.11.0-windows and also some early versions.

Describe the bug

Cannot run the emulator after installation. No error message is displayed.

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Just double click the icon to start
2. Nothing happens

Workaround

Delete the 'NODE_OPTIONS' environment variable and the emulator starts working.

Screenshots

No error message is shown when running the exe directly. But you can find the error below when running from a console.

[cwhitten]

@tonyanziano can you take a look at this?

[tonyanziano]

Sure, will do

[congysu]

@tonyanziano could you please take a look at this item? Thanks.

[tonyanziano]

I can't seem to reproduce this. I have tried setting the NODE_OPTIONS variable and starting Emulator but it starts without any issues.

If I set the --max-http-header-size option to have an empty value, electron will tell me that it needs an argument, so I know it is parsing the option out of the environment variable.

@xiaoyunwei what version of NodeJS are you running?

[xiaoyunwei]

The version on my laptop is "v10.16.3". The one on my desktop is "14.16.0 LTS". Both had the same issue and it is OK now after removing the environment variable.

[tonyanziano]

Thanks for the info.

I tried using version 4.11.0 of the Emulator (Electron 4.x) and was not able to reproduce this. I also tried it on the newer version of Emulator (Electron 11.x) and was unsuccessful as well.

@xiaoyunwei is there any chance you could show me what your NODE_OPTIONS environment variable looks like when you experience this issue?

You can run the following command:

echo %NODE_OPTIONS%

[xiaoyunwei]

This is on a Windows 10 VM in Azure. I didn't install node.js separately on this VM.

[xiaoyunwei]

I can't seem to reproduce this. I have tried setting the NODE_OPTIONS variable and starting Emulator but it starts without any issues.

If I set the --max-http-header-size option to have an empty value, electron will tell me that it needs an argument, so I know it is parsing the option out of the environment variable.

@xiaoyunwei what version of NodeJS are you running?

Can you just try deleting this variable? If it's not set, it uses the default value for max-http-header-size.

[tonyanziano]

Interesting, I thought the missing double quotes would be the issue, but I was still unable to reproduce this:

I don't think we can just delete the variable inside of the code because it looks like electron is throwing the error before the app code is even loaded.

[tonyanziano]

For now the workaround is to delete the NODE_OPTIONS environment variable if you encounter this issue.

I will try and repro this on a WIndows 10 VM in Azure

[tonyanziano]

I tried reproducing this on a freshly created Windows 10 VM in Azure (Windows 10 Pro version 2004) and was unsuccessful:

I'm going to close this issue for now as I am unable to reproduce this, and there appears to be a reliable workaround in which you delete the NODE_OPTIONS environment variable.