Defer to native-fetch whenever ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE is set

[rj-calvin]

You guys are using electron-fetch whenever the is-electron package detects if it is running in an electron process (particularly, the main process). However, is-electron seems to be returning true even when in a process that has been forked from electron's main process as a node server.

This is currently what I am trying to set up in my own application, however, since you can't access electron from within a forked process, attempting to load electron-fetch results in an error wherein electron claims that it hasn't been installed properly.

The environment variable ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE is used to observe when a process is running as a fork from main, so I was thinking an additional condition could be added to defer to native-fetch whenever it is set.

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[achingbrain]

This sounds like it should be a PR to is-electron - have you opened an issue there?

[rj-calvin]

I considered that, but I believe that it's likely that this would be a breaking change there.

[lidel]

Blocked for now: waiting for Node 16 to become LTS, and maybe even Electron to ship ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE with implementation matching Node 16+ changes around node-fetch.

[rj-calvin]

Blocked for now: waiting for Node 16 to become LTS, and maybe even Electron to ship ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE with implementation matching Node 16+ changes around node-fetch.

If anyone needs to have this issue fixed in the meantime, I have a branch with a workaround here: https://github.com/gatsby-tv/js-ipfs-utils

One would only need to add the following to their package.json:

{
  "resolutions": {
    "ipfs-utils": "https://github.com/gatsby-tv/js-ipfs-utils#fix/defer-to-native-fetch"
  }
}

[dkuhnert]

Same issue here. This is also broken in workers.

The electron.net API should only be used when process.type === "browser".
Technically it's still an electron process (as for example process.versions.electron etc. is available) but it's not the main (browser) process. IMHO is-electron is right as it only tells its "some" electron process.

Changing

js-ipfs-utils/src/env.js

Line 8 in 5eecdcb

const IS_ELECTRON_MAIN = IS_ELECTRON && !IS_ENV_WITH_DOM

to

const IS_ELECTRON_MAIN = IS_ELECTRON && !IS_ENV_WITH_DOM && typeof process !== 'undefined' && process.type === "browser"

should do the trick.

[rj-calvin]

@dkuhnert I don't see why the ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE variable wouldn't be sufficient and simpler.