Electron-builder: Production build: unusable binary dependencies (Unexpected end of JSON input)

Created on 22 Oct 2020 · 14Comments · Source: electron-userland/electron-builder

Version:
v22.9.1
Electron Version:
v11.0.0-beta.13
Electron Type (current, beta, nightly):
beta
Target:
macOS 10.15.2
Node Version:
v12.16.1
Last Known Working Electron version:
v10.1.4
Package manager version
Yarn 1.22.10 (or NPM 6.13.4)

Hello,

We are having an issue when building our application with version 11-beta using electron-builder (the behavior changed between version 10.x and 11 of Electron). We rely on static binaries to be included in our build (ffmpeg, to name it), but when starting the built app we get a JS error saying the package.json file for this module is invalid (Unexpected end of JSON input).
When looking at the content of the generated .app the (unpacked) app.asar has properly included the dependencies, and the package.json is valid.

The project runs fine on dev, it's the finalized built version that has an issue. I created a repo with the base project, as well as uploaded the built version in the 1.0.0 release of this repo.

$ git clone https://github.com/lmancel/electron-tests.git
$ yarn install
$ yarn build

Built binary:
https://github.com/lmancel/electron-tests/releases/download/1.0.0/electron-test-1.0.0-mac.zip

Screenshots

Screenshot 2020-10-21 at 16 41 49

Screenshot 2020-10-21 at 16 50 46

Source

lmancel

👀3 👍3

Most helpful comment

It turned out not to be electron-builder related, see https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/26819.

vladimiry on 3 Dec 2020

👍3

All 14 comments

I tried to solve this by:

get deps by

npx npm-remote-ls --flatten electron-settings -d false -o false

asarUnpack all deps

config: {
    appId: 'com.tiddlygit.app',
    productName: 'TiddlyGit',
    asar: true,
    files: ['!tests/**/*', '!docs/**/*', '!template/**/*', '!flow-typed/**/*', '!localization/**/*'],
    extraFiles: [
      {
        from: 'template/wiki',
        to: 'wiki',
        filter: ['**/*'],
      },
      {
        from: 'localization',
        to: 'localization',
        filter: ['**/*'],
      },
    ],
    // add dependencies of tiddlywiki here
    // https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/18540#issuecomment-660679649
    asarUnpack: [
      // tiddlywiki in the worker_thread
      '**/node_modules/@tiddlygit/tiddlywiki/**/*',
      // dep of dugite, asar unpack it so we can solve https://github.com/desktop/dugite/issues/414
      '**/node_modules/dugite/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/rimraf/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/progress/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/mkdirp/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/minimist/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/glob/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/checksum/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/got/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/tar/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/fs.realpath/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/inflight/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/path-is-absolute/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/optimist/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/minimatch/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/inherits/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/@sindresorhus/is/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/@szmarczak/http-timer/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/decompress-response@/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/duplexer3/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/cacheable-request/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/get-stream/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/lowercase-keys/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/mimic-response/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/p-cancelable/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/to-readable-stream/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/url-parse-lax/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/fs-minipass/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/chownr/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/safe-buffer/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/once/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/minizlib/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/wrappy/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/wordwrap/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/defer-to-connect/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/minipass/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/clone-response/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/get-stream/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/http-cache-semantics/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/keyv/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/lowercase-keys/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/brace-expansion/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/responselike/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/pump/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/normalize-url/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/yallist/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/json-buffer/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/balanced-match/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/concat-map/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/prepend-http/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/end-of-stream/**/*',
      // deps of electron-settings
      '**/node_modules/electron-settings/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/lodash.get/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/lodash.set/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/write-file-atomic/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/electron-settings/node_modules/mkdirp/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/lodash.has/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/lodash.unset/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/is-typedarray/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/signal-exit/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/imurmurhash/**/*',
      '**/node_modules/typedarray-to-buffer/**/*'
    ],
    extraResources: [

This works for dugite, but not work for electron-settings, though I add it and all its deps to asarUnpack, it still said it is inside asar.

Screen Shot 2020-11-01 at 11 09 45 AM

linonetwo on 1 Nov 2020

try asar: false solves this, but will impact start-up time.

linonetwo on 1 Nov 2020

I found a fix, exclude the packages with asarUnpack option:

 "asarUnpack": [
      "**/*.node",
      "**/node_modules/is-typings/**/*",
      "**/node_modules/@sindresorhus/do-not-disturb/**/*",
      "**/node_modules/@morajabi/robotjs/**/*",
...
]

and then from now on require these modules like this in your code:

require(require('path').join(__dirname.replace('app.asar', 'app.asar.unpacked'), 'node_modules/MODULE_NAME'))

(instead of require('MODULE_NAME'), note this does not work in dev, so you need to have an if statement)

If you use Webpack however, it's simple, just use this in your webpack.config.js instead:

externals: {
   MODULE_NAME: IS_PROD
    ? `require(require('path').join(__dirname.replace('app.asar', 'app.asar.unpacked'), 'node_modules/${name}'))`
    : `commonjs2 ${name}`
}

(replace MODULE_NAME with names of the packages you excluded, for each of them you need to add a record to the externals config)

momakes2 on 29 Nov 2020

👍2 ❤1 😕1

@Momakes

I found a fix, exclude the packages with asarUnpack option:
 "asarUnpack": [
      "**/*.node",
      "**/node_modules/is-typings/**/*",
      "**/node_modules/@sindresorhus/do-not-disturb/**/*",
      "**/node_modules/@morajabi/robotjs/**/*",
...
]
and then from now on require these modules like this in your code:
require(require('path').join(__dirname.replace('app.asar', 'app.asar.unpacked'), 'node_modules/MODULE_NAME'))
(instead of require('MODULE_NAME'), note this does not work in dev, so you need to have an if statement)

If you use Webpack however, it's simple, just use this in your webpack.config.js instead:
externals: {
   MODULE_NAME: IS_PROD
    ? `require(require('path').join(__dirname.replace('app.asar', 'app.asar.unpacked'), 'node_modules/${name}'))`
    : `commonjs2 ${name}`
}
(replace MODULE_NAME with names of the packages you excluded, for each of them you need to add a record to the externals config)

Thank you for this. Is this method possible in typescript?

benpratt22 on 2 Dec 2020

The workaround is to set asar: false in electron-builder config (another one is to explicitly repack the asar but this is a bad one). The option listed by @momakes2 looks unnecessary hacky.

vladimiry on 2 Dec 2020

I agree @vladimiry. Do you know if a fix is planned soon?

dac09 on 2 Dec 2020

Thanks Vlad.. thought as much. We may just disable asar until fixed then. Thanks again

benpratt22 on 2 Dec 2020

Do you know if a fix is planned soon?

I've not seen any signs of the fix to be planned. Two related issues placed in https://github.com/electron/electron/issues been closed without resolution as irrelevant.

vladimiry on 2 Dec 2020

This is happening with electron 11.0.3. As far as I can tell, it's not possible to use electron 11 with electron-builder at the moment.