How to fix Uncaught Error Cannot find module react

Issue #145

This is my story through dealing with many dependencies when trying to package an electron app. Thanks to my friend https://github.com/timkurvers for helping me out ❤️ This is like a note for my future self

Fixing event

The other I got an issue https://github.com/onmyway133/PushNotifications/issues/3 that reports there’s something wrong with production environment. The problem is that I used RadioButton and its onChange callback takes 2 parameters instead of 1.

Trying packaging

After the fix, I bump version in package.json and run yarn release. To my surprise, the built app was just blank. I tried win.toggleDevTools() to see what’s going on. I can’t use shortcut to open the dev tool any more in production, but there are tools https://github.com/sindresorhus/electron-debug.

The console says that it can’t find the module ‘react’. I then submitted an issue https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-packager/issues/787

Uncaught Error: Cannot find module ‘react’

My environment

• Node v8.4.0
• npm 5.3.0
• yarn 1.3.2
• macOS 10.13.2

Inspecting with debug mode

I then need to run in debug mode to see what’s really happening

DEBUG=electron-packager npm run release

The log says something about npm

Command failed: npm prune –production

Digging a little, I found that this is quite a common issue

• https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-packager/issues/686
• https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/17781

I think the issue may be because of I changed from https://github.com/creationix/nvm to https://github.com/nodenv/nodenv

Updating nodenv

The latest stable version of https://nodejs.org/en/ is 8.9.4. To enable nodenv to see it, we need

brew upgrade node-build

Run the following so that you actually see the 8.9.4

nodenv install --list

Updating node.js

Install version 8.9.4

nodenv install 8.9.4
nodenv global 8.9.4
nodenv rehash

Updating npm

Run the following to update npm to 5.6.0

npm update -g np

Installing dependencies from scratch

Clear old node_modules and package-lock.json

rm -rf node_modules
rm -rf package-lock.json

Then install again

npm install

Packaging

The final step is to package the app again

yarn release