Debugging the Main Process
The browser window DevTools can only debug the renderer process scripts (i.e.
the web pages). In order to provide a way to debug the scripts from the main
process, Electron has provided the --debug and --debug-brk switches.
Command Line Switches
Use the following command line switches to debug Electron's main process:
--debug=[port]
When this switch is used Electron will listen for V8 debugger protocol
messages on port. The default port is 5858.
--debug-brk=[port]
Like --debug but pauses the script on the first line.
Use node-inspector for Debugging
Note: Electron doesn't currently work very well
with node-inspector, and the main process will crash if you inspect the
process object under node-inspector's console.
1. Make sure you have node-gyp required tools installed
2. Install node-inspector
$ npm install node-inspector
3. Install a patched version of node-pre-gyp
$ npm install git+https://git@github.com/enlight/node-pre-gyp.git#detect-electron-runtime-in-find
4. Recompile the node-inspector v8 modules for electron (change the target to your electron version number)
$ node_modules/.bin/node-pre-gyp --target=0.36.2 --runtime=electron --fallback-to-build --directory node_modules/v8-debug/ --dist-url=https://atom.io/download/atom-shell reinstall
$ node_modules/.bin/node-pre-gyp --target=0.36.2 --runtime=electron --fallback-to-build --directory node_modules/v8-profiler/ --dist-url=https://atom.io/download/atom-shell reinstall
See also How to install native modules.
5. Enable debug mode for Electron
You can either start Electron with a debug flag like:
$ electron --debug=5858 your/app
or, to pause your script on the first line:
$ electron --debug-brk=5858 your/app
6. Start the node-inspector server using electron
$ ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE=true path/to/electron.exe node_modules/node-inspector/bin/inspector.js
7. Load the debugger UI
Open http://127.0.0.1:8080/debug?ws=127.0.0.1:8080&port=5858 in the Chrome browser. You may have to click pause if starting with debug-brk to see the entry line.