If an error occurs in main.js, atom-shell does not output that error but instead reports that the app is invalid.

[Twipped]

Even when launching from the command line, any JS error occuring in main.js is internally trapped, preventing debugging. Instead, you get the following:

The error is not reported in the console.

[Nicolab]

Checks the path of the main.js in package.json, if the path is ok, tries adding in the main.js:

process.on('error', function(err) {
  console.log(err);
});

[Twipped]

There is nothing wrong with the structure of the app, that's why I'm reporting the dialog. In this specific case I had a typo in one of my require statements in main.js, but I've also been able to reproduce it by syntax errors in modules required within main.js. I found the problems by running the modules outside of atom-shell. Once I fixed the mistakes, the program launched fine.

I've tried detecting it with process.on('error', ..., 'process.on('uncaughtException', ... and using the included crash-reporter. None of them were able to report what was causing the crash.

[Nicolab]

@ChiperSoft indeed :)

[huvber]

I still have this problem so I think isn't close. There are someway to let atom-shell show wich is the error?

[chemdemo]

Just delete this line:

require('crash-reportor').start();

[sher]

I get the same error often on startup. The reason, for me usually, is requiring non-existent file or module name typo in require method:

var a = require('./wrong-path');

[danShumway]

+1 This is a bug - an incorrect require statement isn't really the same as an invalid app, which makes this error deceptive at best.

The attached commit seems to just manually detect when a module isn't found and then still throw the same error, regardless. Is there something I'm missing? It seems like what you want to detect is if one of the key modules is missing (ie main.js), but this looks to report the same error regardless of which require statement goes wrong.

Absent of a more in-depth solution, could the error message be modified to mention require statements in some way? This can be a pain in the neck to debug if you don't already know that a script error can trigger this.