Debugging startup errors ======================== If something goes wrong on startup -- the splash screen is shown but the main window is not, DevTools should be automatically started in about 5 seconds. If DevTools does not run then they can be started manually by: $ IMAGEGRID_DEBUG=1 ig.js gui or: $ IMAGEGRID_DEBUG=1 make run Common reasons for failure on startup: - path set in cfg/requirejs.js (baseUrl) is not correct on this version on node/electron - electron compatibility issue - rarely: some feature fails to call .declareReady() and the startup process stalls waiting for it, this can be manually overridden by calling .ready() Modules and RequireJS ===================== Most of the system is loaded via browser context RequireJS loader, in node/electron/nw context node-specific stuff is loaded with a second node-enabled RequireJS instance or node require. The ideal solution would be to use one require that sees both the browser and node contexts, the problem is exactly in this, the browser requirejs does not see either node or node modules while the node require loads code that is not visible to devtools unless it is running at that exact moment. Thus we are forced to use both mode requirejs loaders which may be confusing at times. Different loaders ----------------- There are two RequireJS instances present in most contexts in nw.js within the define(..) runner: - require(..) Pure browser RequireJS instance, used to load local modules. - requirejs(..) Node-enabled RequireJS instance, used to load node modules. This is needed as the above require(..) overloads the node native loader. The future ---------- This seems a bit confusing, so at least the naming convention should be revised. Entry points ============ We have two entry points here for a reason, e.js is tuned to be as light/fast as possible for the general case, i.e. when run without arguments combining it with ig.js would make things much-much slower... - index.html - Browser - electron e.js - electron <-> ig.js - parse args if given and optionally return control back to e.js... - ig.js - node -> e.js - node can spawn an electron app