๐จ WARNING: Devtron is currently unmaintained. If you're interested in becoming a maintainer, see Issue #200 for more information.
An Electron DevTools extension to help you inspect, monitor, and debug your app.
- Require graph to help you visualize your app's internal and external library dependencies in both the main and renderer processes.
- IPC monitor to track and inspect the messages sent and received between the renderer and main processes in your app.
- Event inspector that shows the events and listeners that are registered in your app on the core Electron APIs such as the window, the app, and the processes.
- App Linter that checks your apps for possible issues and missing functionality.
npm install --save-dev devtron
Then execute the following from the Console tab of your running Electron app's developer tools:
require('devtron').install()
You should then see a Devtron
tab added.
If your application's BrowserWindow
was created with nodeIntegration
set
to false
then you will need to expose some globals via a preload
script to allow Devtron access to Electron APIs:
window.__devtron = {require: require, process: process}
Then restart your application and Devtron should successfully load. You may
want to guard this assignment with a if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development')
check to ensure these variables aren't exposed in production.
git clone https://github.com/electron/devtron
cd devtron
npm install
npm start
This will start a process that watches and compiles the extension as files are modified.
Then open the Console tab of your Electron app and run the following with the path updated for the location that you've cloned devtron to:
require('/Users/me/code/devtron').install()
Then a Devtron tab should appear and it will now be enabled for that application.
You can reload the extension by closing and reopening the dev tools.
To make developing and debugging the extension easier, you can run it in a Chrome tab that will talk remotely to a running Electron app over HTTP.
-
Set the
DEVTRON_DEBUG_PATH
environment variable to the path of the cloned devtron repository. -
Start your Electron application.
-
Click the Devtron tab.
-
You should then see the following messages logged to the Console tab:
Devtron server listening on http://localhost:3948
Open file:///Users/me/devtron/static/index.html to view
-
Then open
/Users/me/devtron/static/index.html
in Chrome -
The page there will talk remotely to the running Electron app so you'll be able to fully interact with each pane with real data.
require('devtron').install()
cannot be called before theready
event of theapp
module has been emitted.
When using webpack, you may experience issues resolving __dirname
. In accordance with the docs, __dirname
is resolved at runtime on the compiled file.
You have to two solutions:
- Remove
devtron
from Webpack bundle withconfig.externals
- Copy
devtron
files to the same folder as your compiled main process file
config.externals = [
function(context, request, callback) {
if (request.match(/devtron/)) {
return callback(null, 'commonjs ' + request)
}
callback()
}
]
- Make sure that webpack does not replace
__dirname
by setting:
// in your webpack config for main process
{
target: 'electron-main',
node: {
__dirname: false,
}
}
- Ensure that the copy target for
devtron/manifest.json
is the same folder as your compiled main processjs
file. - Ensure that the copy target for the
devtron/out/browser-globals.js
isout/browser-globals.js
relative to your compiled main processjs
file.
You can copy files with copy-webpack-plugin
.
const path = require('path');
const CopyWebpackPlugin = require('copy-webpack-plugin');
const copyFiles = [
{
from: path.resolve(__dirname, 'node_modules/devtron/manifest.json')
},
{
from: path.resolve(__dirname, 'node_modules/devtron/out/browser-globals.js'),
to: path.resolve(__dirname, 'out'),
}
];
config.target = 'electron-main',
config.plugins = [
new CopyWebpackPlugin(copyFiles),
]
Have an idea for something this extension could do to make debugging Electron apps easier? Please open an issue.
Pull requests are also welcome and appreciated. Run npm test
to run the
existing tests. This project uses the standard JavaScript style.
MIT