error parsing dependencies tree

[Galkon]

Doing routine dependency updates, updating electron-builder from 26.0.17 to 26.3.2 yields this build error. I am not sure how to diagnose / debug it further.

  • injecting environment  envFile=/private/var/folders/b2/ytkzw9hj1v31kjsys5nchf_80000gn/T/electron-build/packed/electron-builder.env
  • electron-builder  version=26.3.2 os=23.6.0
  • loaded configuration  file=/private/var/folders/b2/ytkzw9hj1v31kjsys5nchf_80000gn/T/electron-build/packed/electron-builder.config.js
  • writing effective config  file=release/builder-effective-config.yaml
  • skipped dependencies rebuild  reason=npmRebuild is set to false
  • packaging       platform=darwin arch=arm64 electron=37.10.3 appOutDir=release/mac-arm64
  ⨯ error parsing dependencies tree  error=Unexpected token ' ', " WARN  The"... is not valid JSON tempOutputFile=/private/var/folders/b2/ytkzw9hj1v31kjsys5nchf_80000gn/T/t-ssRCso/pnpm-0-output.json cwd=/private/var/folders/b2/ytkzw9hj1v31kjsys5nchf_80000gn/T/electron-build/packed fileContent= WARN  The "workspaces" field in package.json is not supported by pnpm. Create a "pnpm-workspace.yaml" file instead.
[
  {
    "name": "Highlight",
    "version": "1.3.0-alpha",
    "path": "/private/var/folders/b2/ytkzw9hj1v31kjsys5nchf_80000gn/T/electron-build/packed",
    "private": true
  }
]

  ⨯ Unexpected token ' ', " WARN  The"... is not valid JSON  failedTask=build stackTrace=SyntaxError: Unexpected token ' ', " WARN  The"... is not valid JSON
    at JSON.parse (<anonymous>)
    at PnpmNodeModulesCollector.parseDependenciesTree (/private/var/folders/b2/ytkzw9hj1v31kjsys5nchf_80000gn/T/electron-build/packed/node_modules/app-builder-lib/src/node-module-collector/pnpmNodeModulesCollector.ts:113:51)
    at retries (/private/var/folders/b2/ytkzw9hj1v31kjsys5nchf_80000gn/T/electron-build/packed/node_modules/app-builder-lib/src/node-module-collector/nodeModulesCollector.ts:113:27)
    at retry (/private/var/folders/b2/ytkzw9hj1v31kjsys5nchf_80000gn/T/electron-build/packed/node_modules/builder-util-runtime/src/retry.ts:9:12)
    at PnpmNodeModulesCollector.getNodeModules (/private/var/folders/b2/ytkzw9hj1v31kjsys5nchf_80000gn/T/electron-build/packed/node_modules/app-builder-lib/src/node-module-collector/nodeModulesCollector.ts:65:31)
    at computeNodeModuleFileSets (/private/var/folders/b2/ytkzw9hj1v31kjsys5nchf_80000gn/T/electron-build/packed/node_modules/app-builder-lib/src/util/appFileCopier.ts:191:21)
    at /private/var/folders/b2/ytkzw9hj1v31kjsys5nchf_80000gn/T/electron-build/packed/node_modules/app-builder-lib/src/platformPackager.ts:493:34
    at async Promise.all (index 0)
    at AsyncTaskManager.awaitTasks (/private/var/folders/b2/ytkzw9hj1v31kjsys5nchf_80000gn/T/electron-build/packed/node_modules/builder-util/src/asyncTaskManager.ts:65:25)
    at MacPackager.doPack (/private/var/folders/b2/ytkzw9hj1v31kjsys5nchf_80000gn/T/electron-build/packed/node_modules/app-builder-lib/src/platformPackager.ts:310:5)

[mmaietta]

WARN  The "workspaces" field in package.json is not supported by pnpm. Create a "pnpm-workspace.yaml" file instead.

How is your package set up? What package manager(s) are being used? (npm, yarn classic, bun, pnpm, yarn 2+?) And what commands are you executing in terminal?

Your package.json has workspaces? But project is (or isn't?) using pnpm -> as electron-builder is detecting to use PnpmNodeModulesCollector

[Galkon]

@mmaietta its using pnpm 8 with pnpm workspaces in a monorepo. Which is then deployed to a standalone folder using pnpm-better-pack. It uses npm from there. There is not even a workspace field in the package.json so I have no idea where this warning log comes from.

[mmaietta]

Can you create a minimum reproducible repo for this? Something I can debug further with.

Side question: What is the use for pnpm-better-pack? electron-builder already is designed to extract a package's dependencies from the workspace, streaming them directly into the asar. Excluding files can also be done with the electron-builder config, right?

[Galkon]

Can you create a minimum reproducible repo for this? Something I can debug further with.

Side question: What is the use for pnpm-better-pack? electron-builder already is designed to extract a package's dependencies from the workspace, streaming them directly into the asar. Excluding files can also be done with the electron-builder config, right?

I don't know if I can, as I'm not sure what actually causes this error to be thrown. There is no workspace property in the package.json in question so I don't even know how I got here 😅

We use pnpm-better-pack because when the project was setup, traversing and resolving node modules in a pnpm workspace (with pnpm 8) and electron-builder did not work. It fails to include many of them in the final build.

I have not tried with newer pnpm yet.

[mmaietta]

Ah, that makes much more sense. Legacy versions of electron-builder couldn't handle the symlinking/hoist behavior of pnpm or yarn berry. It took a hot minute, but we were able to build out a collector for each package manager in order to support corepack setups. Additionally, in adding the corepack-support feature, electron-builder's unit tests are able to run in much more explicit isolation. I won't deny, there's definitely still some kinks to work out as there's a lot of edge cases to handle since we no longer require a hoisted module setup.

Any chance you can try without using better-pack? I feel like that's complicating the setup env here and electron-builder should just work OOB directly with pnpm 8.

If you can share a sample project, I'm happy to take a more explicit look into this issue as well.