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	@​electron/​asar@​4.1.0

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Thanks for the comments @erickzhao !

What are your thoughts on these three line items from my original post?

1. Add the plugin to https://github.com/electron/forge/blob/next/packages/api/core/src/api/init-scripts/init-npm.ts
2. Add the plugin to the default templates.
3. Anything else beyond the plugin simply existing.

@nmggithub I think it'd be good to be able to choose a set of additional plugins to install to each template via the @inquirer/prompts CLI. I can open a separate PR to tweak the init UX such that interactive mode selectively chooses prompts instead of being disabled every time we pass any flags in.

(I think for example auto-unpack-natives doesn't need to be added by default anymore because of this upstream change in Packager 19 (electron/packager#1841)).

Also maybe I missed a reference, can someone link me the context for why these APIs are living in @electron/asar as opposed to the packaging tools.

The separation of concerns here as I understand it is:

• @electron/asar is responsible for creating and extracting ASAR files
• @electron/packager is responsible for generating a packaged electron app with all relevant metadata, signatures, configuration and tweaks
• @electron/forge wires everything else together

I'm confused as to why the digest management things are living in ASAR only to then immediately be called exclusively from other packages? That seems very antithetical to the goals of dependency reduction and keeping a clean ecosystem. (Context is I noticed this because @electron/asar started depending on "plist" and IMO there's no reason for that)

If the goal here is to have a single reference implementation of ASAR digest for macOS imo that reference implementation should be in @electron/packager not in asar, not in forge and not in it's own package

@MarshallOfSound I reached for @electron/asar as I wanted to break this feature down similarly to @electron/fuses:

• a CLI that modifies the executable,
• an API that can then be used by @electron/packager, and
• then a @electron/forge plugin

I completely understand how putting the CLI implementation changes the scope of @electron/asar. It does feel a bit strange, but I wasn't sure how else to achieve the above.

If the goal here is to have a single reference implementation of ASAR digest for macOS imo that reference implementation should be in @electron/packager not in asar, not in forge and not in it's own package

I think this makes sense within the scope of our own packages. However, it severely limits anyone who doesn't use Forge. Other systems, like Electron Builder are able to use things like Fuses because we happen to expose them as an API. That may not have been an explicit goal, but it does currently happen and I find it a compelling reason to also include an API here as well.

If that API lived in @electron/packager, then systems like Electron Builder importing it would likely be redundant, since it would involve depending on a package that contains logic it already has.

On a side note, if you have strong opinions, in general, about where things should live, then you should probably also take a look at electron/asar#410.

Edit: one important thing to note is that the CLI in @electron/asar has been documented in our Electron 41 release blog post, so that might make it a bit difficult to pivot from the current implementation.