Uncaught Error: Could not locate the bindings file.

[johnvs]

I am trying to use the package serialport in a project with no success. I have simplified the project to the following:

1. Created a new Bozon project with bozon new bozon-serialport-test.
2. Run bozon start to verify that the project works as expected.
3. To the top of app/renderer/application.js, added the line
   const Serialport = require('serialport);.

Doing this results in the following error.

application.js:2024 Uncaught Error: Could not locate the bindings file. Tried:
→ /Users/john/Documents/Software_Development/Node/bozon_serialport_test/build/serialport.node
→ /Users/john/Documents/Software_Development/Node/bozon_serialport_test/build/Debug/serialport.node
→ /Users/john/Documents/Software_Development/Node/bozon_serialport_test/build/Release/serialport.node
→ /Users/john/Documents/Software_Development/Node/bozon_serialport_test/out/Debug/serialport.node
→ /Users/john/Documents/Software_Development/Node/bozon_serialport_test/Debug/serialport.node
→ /Users/john/Documents/Software_Development/Node/bozon_serialport_test/out/Release/serialport.node
→ /Users/john/Documents/Software_Development/Node/bozon_serialport_test/Release/serialport.node
→ /Users/john/Documents/Software_Development/Node/bozon_serialport_test/build/default/serialport.node
→ /Users/john/Documents/Software_Development/Node/bozon_serialport_test/compiled/6.5.0/darwin/x64/serialport.node

The correct path is /Users/john/Documents/Software_Development/Node/bozon_serialport_test/builds/development/node_modules/serialport/build/Release/serialport.node.

As suggested here, I ran the (slightly modified) command ./app/node_modules/.bin/electron-rebuild (since the app node_modules dir is where serialport is). I get the same result.

Also from that page, I tried HOME=~/.electron-gyp node-gyp rebuild --target=1.4.15 --arch=x64 --dist-url=https://atom.io/download/electron and got the same result.

I also read through this post and tried the following:

1. Installed node-pre-gyp globally with yarn global node-pre-gyp.
2. In the directory . . .bozon_serialport_test/app/node_modules/serialport, I executed node-pre-gyp rebuild.
3. I ran the project again and got the same error.

I am using:
electron 1.4.15,
bozon 0.7.0,
OS X 10.11.6

What is generating those incorrect paths? Is there anything else to try to make this work?

[johnvs]

This appears to be a webpack issue. Because serialport is a binary file, it needs to be excluded from webpack. One solution for accomplishing this is adding an 'externals' property to the webpack configuration object in the file bozon/lib/building/tasks.js.

externals: [
    (function () {
      var IGNORES = [
        'electron'
      ];
      return function (context, request, callback) {
        if (IGNORES.indexOf(request) >= 0) {
          return callback(null, "require('" + request + "')");
        }
        return callback();
      };
    })()
]

An even easier solution is changing the require statement ever so slightly:
WAS: const Serialport = require('serialport');
IS: const Serialport = window.require('serialport');

The original answer is here.