Is externalizeDepsPlugin taking modules dependencies into accounts ?

[michael-dm]

Describe the bug

I might just misunderstand how the plugin works but I find that dependencies in package.json are correctly externalised, but not their dependencies, forcing me to add each and every one of them to my package.json.

Is it intended behaviour ?

Electron-Vite Version

1.0.15

Electron Version

22.0.0

Vite Version

3.2.5

Validations

• Follow the Code of Conduct.
• Read the Contributing Guidelines.
• Read the docs.
• Check that there isn't already an issue that reports the same bug to avoid creating a duplicate.

[alex8088]

@michael-dm

For the main process and preload scripts, the best practice is to externalize dependencies and only bundle our own code.
So the externalizeDepsPlugin is designed to externalize all dependencies in package.json and we need to install the dependencies required by the app into the dependencies of package.json. When packaging the app, these dependencies will also be packaged together, such as electron-builder. Don't worry about them being lost. On the other hand, devDependencies will not be packaged.

It is important to note that some modules that only support ESM, we should not externalize it. We should let electron-vite bundle it into a CJS standard module to support Electron.

For renderers, it is usually fully bundle, so dependencies are best installed in devDependencies. This makes the final package more smaller.

[michael-dm]

So that I understand, but what about dependencies of dependencies ? When bundling my app I found that they were not packaged by electron-builder.

Current workaround is adding them manually to the root package.json but this is inconvenient.

[alex8088]

electron-builder will also automatically resolve dependencies of dependencies. It may be a configuration problem of electron-builder. How the files attribute is configured?

[michael-dm]

You were right this is because I use pnpm and there is currently a bug : electron-userland/electron-builder#6792 (comment)

Thank you.

[alex8088]

@michael-dm

If you want to use pnpm package manager, you can add .npmrc file with shamefully-hoist=true in root and reinstall deps.
Also, if you use pnpm create @quick-start/electron to scaffold your project, these will be added automatically.