browserify bundle electron app main process file

Question

I am building a electron app and currently using browserify for the renderer (web page) files like any other javascript front end. I would like to also use browserify to bundle the main process files. However, browswerify is unable to find the electron built in modules like clipboard, ipc, browser-window, app, etc...

In my main.js file which serves as the entry point for the electron app. I have:

const ipc = require('ipc');
const clipboard = require('clipboard');
const BrowserWindow = require('browser-window');
const app = require('app');
const yargs = require('yargs');

the const yargs loads fine as it is in the node_modeuls folder and browserify can resolve that. However the othe four items cannot be found by browserify and therefore fail my build.

[11:49:17] Finished 'development' after 17 ms
Error: Cannot find module 'ipc' from '<path>'
Error: Cannot find module 'clipboard' from '<path>'
Error: Cannot find module 'browser-window' from '<path>'
Error: Cannot find module 'app' from '<path>'

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

With browserify you can set the options 'ignoreMissing' and 'detectGlobals' which allow browserify to ignore built int modules that eventually get loaded automatically in the electron app.

browserify({
    entries: './src/main.js',
    extensions: ['.js'],
    ignoreMissing: true,
    detectGlobals: false,
    bare: true,
    debug: false
})