electron-builder BUG: `ar`/`fpm` fails during linux build

Electron-Builder Version: 24.13.3

Node Version: v16.20.2

Electron Version: 29.4.5

Target: ARM64 Linux

Trying to build my large electron app for debian (total packaged sized is ~4Gib). I get an error when running: DEBUG=electron-builder:* electron-builder --linux --arm64 --config the.spice.must.flow.cjs.

The ar/fpm commands seems to sh*t the bed? Kinda looks like maybe a corrupt workingDir (see error textworkingDir=)? Or possibly just some edge-case since my app is quite large. The fact I get different errors sometimes also smells race-condition-y.

FPM Error

 ⨯ cannot execute  cause=exit status 1
                    out={:timestamp=>"2024-09-08T12:40:40.513518-0400", :message=>"Setting workdir", :workdir=>"/var/folders/lx/3zfzg6xd4_l1lzqbl04kb22h0000gn/T", :level=>:info, :file=>"/Users/llama/Library/Caches/electron-builder/fpm/fpm-1.9.3-20150715-2.2.2-mac/lib/app/lib/fpm/command.rb", :line=>"294", :method=>"execute"}
    {:timestamp=>"2024-09-08T12:40:40.514008-0400", :message=>"Setting attribute", :output_type=>"deb", :level=>:debug, :file=>"/Users/llama/Library/Caches/electron-builder/fpm/fpm-1.9.3-20150715-2.2.2-mac/lib/app/lib/fpm/command.rb", :line=>"338", :method=>"block (2 levels) in execute"}
    {:timestamp=>"2024-09-08T12:40:40.514073-0400", :message=>"Setting attribute", :input_type=>"dir", :level=>:debug, :file=>"/Users/llama/Library/Caches/electron-builder/fpm/fpm-1.9.3-20150715-2.2.2-mac/lib/app/lib/fpm/command.rb", :line=>"338", :method=>"block (2 levels) in execute"}

    ...A lot more logs like above..

AR Error

⨯ cannot execute  cause=exit status 1
                    out={:timestamp=>"2024-09-07T20:55:12.296629-0400", :message=>"Debian packaging tools generally labels all files in /etc as config files, as mandated by policy, so fpm defaults to this behavior for deb packages. You can disable this default behavior with --deb-no-default-config-files flag", :level=>:warn}
    {:timestamp=>"2024-09-07T20:58:54.087859-0400", :message=>"Process failed: ar failed (exit code 1). Full command was:[\"ar\", \"-qc\", \"/Users/llama/Sorcery/releaseday/soundsafari/dist/soundsafari_0.0.0_arm64.deb\", \"debian-binary\", \"control.tar.gz\", \"/var/folders/lx/3zfzg6xd4_l1lzqbl04kb22h0000gn/T/package-deb-build-da69da7c67dbde14e317f0e9bc2e87b96ea0cd2d4a3622bfe2c477b2b469/data.tar.xz\"]", :level=>:error}

Does anyone know how to run the build such that I can see the stderr from ar/fpm during build?

Also curious if this might be a downstream issue with some dep-library used for linux builds?

Sep 08 '24 19:09 Bug-Reaper

Do you have a sample repo to repro this with? Wondering if this related to some custom configuration you have.

"Debian packaging tools generally labels all files in /etc as config files, as mandated by policy,

Sep 09 '24 00:09 mmaietta

@mmaietta I don't off-hand have something to reproduce this, may spin something up if I have the time.

Not sure what's going on here but the build I did some digging, there's a few open issues I might tag here.

My project size shouldn't be a related cause of issue. There's some talk about ~10Gib max file-size b/c of ar archive limitations:

"File sizes are limited to 10 ASCII decimal digits, allowing for up to approximately 9536.74 MiB member files."

I also tried forcing a newer version of fpm but received the same error.

I recently discovered that despite the above error ⨯ cannot execute cause=exit status 1 the build command actually does produce a valid .deb that I was able to install on ARM flavored Ubuntu with no issue. Leads me to believe ar can potentially exit with code 1 even when successful or some other madness.

Also I just checked and my build contains no files or folders named or including the string "etc" assuming unrelated for now but good call-out.

Sep 12 '24 08:09 Bug-Reaper

Do you know a way to not clean-up failed build temp files so that I can manually attempt to re-run the last failed command?

Sep 12 '24 08:09 Bug-Reaper

The easiest route is to probably just patch cleanup and cleanupSync in node_modules/temp-file/out/main.js subdependency with a return as the first line of the function, as that's the package that electron-builder is leveraging under-the-hood (npm package temp-file)

Build paths should also be easy to find with the env var DEBUG=electron-builder set. I've tried to maintain+add logging to make things like this easier. If anything is missing for your debugging, let me know and I can add some additional logging for the next release

Sep 12 '24 16:09 mmaietta

This issue is stale because it has been open 60 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 30 days.

Mar 27 '25 00:03 github-actions[bot]

Ohh this definitely still impacts me GH actions bot!

It's annoying b/c the build does succeed so the benefit to solving this is low. I do get a little bit better each time I try to fix these deeper build problems. Can hopefully give this some cycles in a couple of weeks.

Mar 29 '25 01:03 Bug-Reaper

This issue is stale because it has been open 60 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 30 days.

Apr 30 '25 00:04 github-actions[bot]

I get same err：

running electron-builder with arguments: --linux,deb,--publish,never
  • electron-builder  version=26.0.12 os=6.11.0-1012-azure
  • loaded configuration  file=/home/runner/work/openblock-desktop/openblock-desktop/electron-builder.yaml
  • loaded parent configuration  file=/home/runner/work/openblock-desktop/openblock-desktop/node_modules/electron-webpack/out/electron-builder.js
  • executing @electron/rebuild  electronVersion=15.5.7 arch=x64 buildFromSource=false appDir=./
  • installing native dependencies  arch=x64
  • preparing       moduleName=@serialport/bindings-cpp arch=x64
  • finished        moduleName=@serialport/bindings-cpp arch=x64
  • completed installing native dependencies
  • packaging       platform=linux arch=x64 electron=15.5.7 appOutDir=dist/linux-unpacked
  • downloading     url=https://github.com/electron/electron/releases/download/v15.5.7/electron-v15.5.7-linux-x64.zip size=82 MB parts=8
  • downloaded      url=https://github.com/electron/electron/releases/download/v15.5.7/electron-v15.5.7-linux-x64.zip duration=906ms
  • building        target=deb arch=x64 file=dist/OpenBlock-Desktop_v2.5.4_linux_amd64.deb
  • adding autoupdate files for: deb. (Beta feature)  resourceDir=dist/linux-unpacked/resources
  • downloading     url=https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder-binaries/releases/download/fpm-1.9.3-2.3.1-linux-x86_64/fpm-1.9.3-2.3.1-linux-x86_64.7z size=5.0 MB parts=1
  • downloaded      url=https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder-binaries/releases/download/fpm-1.9.3-2.3.1-linux-x86_64/fpm-1.9.3-2.3.1-linux-x86_64.7z duration=466ms
  ⨯ cannot execute  cause=exit status 1
                    out={:timestamp=>"2025-05-05T02:30:46.065850+0000", :message=>"Debian packaging tools generally labels all files in /etc as config files, as mandated by policy, so fpm defaults to this behavior for deb packages. You can disable this default behavior with --deb-no-default-config-files flag", :level=>:warn}
    {:timestamp=>"2025-05-05T02:36:44.539350+0000", :message=>"Process failed: ar failed (exit code 1). Full command was:[\"ar\", \"-qc\", \"/home/runner/work/openblock-desktop/openblock-desktop/dist/OpenBlock-Desktop_v2.5.4_linux_amd64.deb\", \"debian-binary\", \"control.tar.gz\", \"/tmp/package-deb-build-41b5c13c4a67647c40176ed29cb333b9f16fbfe84384825c7234bd90890b/data.tar.gz\"]", :level=>:error}
    
                    command=/home/runner/.cache/electron-builder/fpm/fpm-1.9.3-2.3.1-linux-x86_64/fpm -s dir --force -t deb -d libnotify4 -d libxtst6 -d libnss3 --deb-recommends libappindicator3-1 --deb-compression gz --architecture amd64 --after-install /tmp/t-LefXDZ/0-after-install --after-remove /tmp/t-LefXDZ/1-after-remove --description '
     OpenBlock as a self-contained desktop application' --version 2.5.4 --package /home/runner/work/openblock-desktop/openblock-desktop/dist/OpenBlock-Desktop_v2.5.4_linux_amd64.deb --name openblock-desktop --maintainer 'Openblock.cc Team <[email protected]>' --url 'https://github.com/openblockcc/openblock-desktop#readme' --vendor 'Openblock.cc Team <[email protected]>' --deb-priority optional --license MIT /home/runner/work/openblock-desktop/openblock-desktop/dist/linux-unpacked/=/opt/OpenBlockDesktop /home/runner/work/openblock-desktop/openblock-desktop/buildResources/linux/512x512.png=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/512x512/apps/openblock-desktop.png /tmp/t-LefXDZ/5-OpenBlockDesktop.desktop=/usr/share/applications/openblock-desktop.desktop
                    workingDir=
/home/runner/work/openblock-desktop/openblock-desktop/scripts/electron-builder-wrapper.js:96
        throw new Error(`Child process returned status code ${result.status}`);
        ^

Error: Child process returned status code 1
    at runBuilder (/home/runner/work/openblock-desktop/openblock-desktop/scripts/electron-builder-wrapper.js:96:15)
    at main (/home/runner/work/openblock-desktop/openblock-desktop/scripts/electron-builder-wrapper.js:233:9)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/home/runner/work/openblock-desktop/openblock-desktop/scripts/electron-builder-wrapper.js:237:1)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1198:14)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1252:10)
    at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1076:32)
    at Function.Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:911:12)
    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (node:internal/modules/run_main:81:12)
    at node:internal/main/run_main_module:22:47

May 05 '25 03:05 zhengyangliu

@zhengyangliu how big is your final target installer, did it successfully build even with the error?

May 09 '25 01:05 Bug-Reaper

@zhengyangliu您的最终目标安装程序有多大，即使出现错误它是否成功构建？

The capacity before packaging is about 6.7G, and after packaging is about 1G. The build is actually successful, so I currently use a patch file to let the script ignore the error so that CI can continue.

The following is the error ci before the patch file is applyed: https://github.com/openblockcc/openblock-desktop/actions/runs/14821297515/job/41609407659

May 09 '25 14:05 zhengyangliu

This issue is stale because it has been open for 30 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment, or this will be closed in 30 days.

Jun 09 '25 00:06 github-actions[bot]

Curious if upgrading fpm and portable ruby bundle in https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder/pull/9100 will resolve this issue.

Jun 09 '25 15:06 mmaietta

@mmaietta it sounds worth a shot.

Next build I'll give it a go 🤲!

Jun 10 '25 01:06 Bug-Reaper

This issue is stale because it has been open for 30 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment, or this will be closed in 30 days.

Jul 12 '25 00:07 github-actions[bot]

Still affected, will hopefully test within the next 30 days actions bot

Jul 23 '25 02:07 Bug-Reaper

This issue is stale because it has been open for 30 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment, or this will be closed in 30 days.

Aug 24 '25 00:08 github-actions[bot]

This issue was closed because it has been stalled for 30 days with no activity.

Sep 24 '25 00:09 github-actions[bot]

Still affected here :(

"electron": "38.2.0", "electron-builder": "26.0.12"

Same: build + publish succeed, but the CI/CD job / action fails.

So there's no way to disable this autoupdate thing? Where's the documentation for this beta feature?

Oct 02 '25 13:10 yphil-dev

Can you please try 26.0.20? fpm was upgraded in 26.0.18

Oct 02 '25 14:10 mmaietta