Dependency calling chdir

[scholtzm]

One of my dependencies (a critical one) calls chdir. According to docs, working directory cannot be set.

How are others dealing with this issue? Is there any way around this?

[HZSamir]

I am in the same boat as @scholtzm
Has there been any development since?

[scholtzm]

Interesting coincidence - I started digging into this issue only 2 days ago after months of break.

In my case, the dependency calls .chdir(__dirname) so I decided to use --unpack-dir flag to unpack this specific dependency. The result was:

• app.asar.unpacked folder - this folder contains that one dependency I unpacked
• app.asar file - according to asar list command, this file still contains the dependency as well 🤔

When the code is executing, __dirname points to folder inside app.asar (no idea why, it should be app.asar.unpacked ❓) and so it fails once again. If I place a breakpoint and modify __dirname to contain app.asar.unpacked, it works.

[scholtzm]

@Unforgiven-wanda Comments here might interest you if you still haven't solved your problem: electron/electron#8206

Closing this since there's not much to be done here.

[HZSamir]

@scholtzm Your answer kinda lost me there. Did you manage to monkey patch chdir for it to work inside ASAR? I'm not clear on that.

[scholtzm]

You can see my very specific monkey patch here: https://github.com/scholtzm/punk/blob/master/src/utils/monkey-patch.js

I override chdir with custom logic and then prepend path for a small set of files. Since chdir is now just a dummy function, it allows me to package everything inside an asar archive.

[HZSamir]

Thank you @scholtzm This was exactly it.
Good day :)