electron-forge start stopped working on Windows

[drewdelano]

Version: github:castlabs/electron-releases#25.0.0-beta.4+wvcus
Electron Forge Version: 6.1.1
Yarn Version: 1.22.19
Node Version: v16.14.0
OS: Windows 10

This is the error that started me looking into the problem:

An unhandled exception has occurred inside Forge:
spawn C:\git\Trigram\canopy-app\node_modules\electron\dist\Electron.app\Contents\MacOS\Electron ENOENT
Error: spawn C:\git\Trigram\canopy-app\node_modules\electron\dist\Electron.app\Contents\MacOS\Electron ENOENT
    at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (node:internal/child_process:283:19)
    at onErrorNT (node:internal/child_process:478:16)
    at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:83:21)

This is very wrong since it's giving an MacOS path on Windows 10 (I know, I know, I'm old).

This was the state of the electron folder and it's path.txt:

Also noteworthy is that there is no dist folder there which is a problem and I suspect means that the install.js was run on another machine.

I managed to fix this by switching into the electron folder, deleting the path.txt file, and manually running node install.js:

C:\git\Trigram\canopy-app\node_modules\electron [master ≡ +1 ~2 -0 !]> node .\install.js

Afterwards the folder looks like this:

And the dist folder is now populated.

I hope the detail makes this easier to find and if nothing else I hope it provides better work around steps for others facing this problem.

Cheers!