Support running inside asar packaged app

[HaimBendanan]

I am using node-chromedriver as part of an application that is distributed to customers.
I am building the app with electron-builder, but get the following error on startup:

...Error: spawn ENOENT
    at errnoException (child_process.js...

I somehow narrowed down the issue to being related to asar packaging.
When packaging the app into an asar archive, the chromedriver will throw an error, but it will work as expected if not packaging as asar.
See the following links that discuss the issue:
https://www.electronjs.org/docs/tutorial/application-packaging
And here:
electron/electron#9459

Do you think that it would be possible to make chromedriver work from within an asar archive?

[giggio]

I have no idea. I don't know asar.
The only place where we run a child process is this line:

node-chromedriver/install.js

Line 123 in 5e2c65c

const cp = child_process.spawn(chromedriverBinaryFilePath, ['--version']);

You could set the force download flag, and the whole method would be skipped, as per this line:

node-chromedriver/install.js

Line 116 in 5e2c65c

const forceDownload = process.env.npm_config_chromedriver_force_download === 'true' || process.env.CHROMEDRIVER_FORCE_DOWNLOAD === 'true';

See:

https://github.com/giggio/node-chromedriver#force-download

Are you able to do that?

[HaimBendanan]

I ended up not using asar at all.
I think that the problematic line was the one below, is that possible?

node-chromedriver/bin/chromedriver

Line 3 in 5e2c65c

const spawn = require("child_process").spawn;

Btw, in my use case, i am shipping an app that uses the chrome driver, so I need to handle cases where users have different chrome versions, and where they update chrome once in a while.
I ended up calling the install script every time my app start, to install the appropriate chrome version
Would be great if it was a built in functionality (I had to do some workarounds to make it works)

[giggio]

Spawning the process is core to what this package does. If you run it, that's what it'll do. If you want to run it, how to do it without spawn?

Regarding the multiple versions, can you elaborate? What do you need?

[giggio]

I'm closing it as I am not sure where this is going. Feel free to elaborate on a new issue.