This is forge-externals-plugin in Typescript for electron-forge 6.x original plugin has outdated APIs for this is a fixed version.

All credits and big thanks to https://github.com/timfish/forge-externals-plugin

forge-externals-plugin-ts

When using Electron with Webpack, the easiest way to support native modules is to add them to Webpack externals configuration. This tells webpack to load them from node_modules via require():

module.exports = {
  module: {
    rules,
  },
  plugins: plugins,
  resolve: {
    extensions: [".js", ".ts", ".jsx", ".tsx", ".css"],
  },
  externals: {
    // Always load `native-hello-world` via require
    "native-hello-world": "commonjs2 native-hello-world",
  },
};

This works in development but with Electron Forge + Webpack, node_modules gets excluded during packaging so the modules are missing in the packaged app.

This plugin should be added after WebpackPlugin and it ensures that your external modules and their dependencies are included in the packaged app.

here is an example of forge.config.ts

...
const { ForgeExternalsPlugin } = require('forge-externals-plugin-ts')
...

const config: ForgeConfig = {
  packagerConfig: {
    icon: 'src/assets/app-icons/icon'
  },
  rebuildConfig: {},
  publishers: [
    {
      name: '@electron-forge/publisher-github',
      config: {
        repository: {
          owner: 'kurdin',
          name: 'your-app-name'
        },
        prerelease: true,
        draft: true,
        authToken: process.env.GITHUB_TOKEN
      }
    }
  ],
  ...
  plugins: [
    new WebpackPlugin({...}),
    new ForgeExternalsPlugin({
      externals: ['native-hello-world'],
      includeDeps: true
    })
  ]
}

export default config