I'm working on an electron app and within the app, I execute shell mands using child_process.exec. One of the mands I run is npm run start; this works perfectly in a dev environment but when I build the application for production all npm mands fail with showing the following error:

   Error: Command failed: npm run start
   /bin/sh: npm: mand not found


    at ChildProcess.exithandler (child_process.js:287)
    at emitTwo (events.js:126)
    at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:214)
    at maybeClose (internal/child_process.js:925)
    at Socket.stream.socket.on (internal/child_process.js:346)
    at emitOne (events.js:116)
    at Socket.emit (events.js:211)
    at Pipe._handle.close [as _onclose] (net.js:554)

I tried running the application in debug mode by running the following mand open MyApp.app/Contents/MacOS/MyApp and the npm mands run successfully with no errors.

What could be the issue?

I'm working on an electron app and within the app, I execute shell mands using child_process.exec. One of the mands I run is npm run start; this works perfectly in a dev environment but when I build the application for production all npm mands fail with showing the following error:

   Error: Command failed: npm run start
   /bin/sh: npm: mand not found


    at ChildProcess.exithandler (child_process.js:287)
    at emitTwo (events.js:126)
    at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:214)
    at maybeClose (internal/child_process.js:925)
    at Socket.stream.socket.on (internal/child_process.js:346)
    at emitOne (events.js:116)
    at Socket.emit (events.js:211)
    at Pipe._handle.close [as _onclose] (net.js:554)

I tried running the application in debug mode by running the following mand open MyApp.app/Contents/MacOS/MyApp and the npm mands run successfully with no errors.

What could be the issue?

• javascript
• node.js
• npm
• electron
• electron-packager

• Is node installed on the non dev machine ? – Seblor Commented Mar 29, 2019 at 9:10
• I'm running the prod version of the application on my machine which has nide installed – HackAfro Commented Mar 29, 2019 at 9:12
• This issue might be related : github./electron/electron/issues/7688 – Seblor Commented Mar 29, 2019 at 9:14
• 1 Thanks @Seblor this solved my problem. – HackAfro Commented Mar 29, 2019 at 9:39
• 2 You should create an answer with the plete steps you took to solve your issue, since I only directed you to some github issue. It might be helpful for other people getting the same error. – Seblor Commented Mar 29, 2019 at 9:40

1 Answer 1

The issue that the environment variable of $PATH is wrong inside the packaged app, it works in development because the application is launched from the terminal which gives it access to the $BASH profile.

To solve this problem I used this package fix-path. I installed the package and added the following snippet at the top of the file

if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production') {
  const fixPath = require('fix-path');

  fixPath();
}

I came to this answer after going through this issue on GitHub. Thanks to @Seblor