Update Electron

Updates the pinned Electron version across the RStudio codebase and verifies the result.

Arguments

The user provides the target Electron version (e.g. 39.8.4).

Steps

1. Verify starting branch

Before doing anything else, confirm the current branch is main. Starting off anything other than main would base the work on the wrong commit.

git branch --show-current

If the output is not main, stop immediately and warn the user that they must switch to main (and pull the latest) before re-running this skill. Do not proceed with any further steps.

2. Update NEWS.md

Find the ### Dependencies section and update the Electron version line:

- Electron <NEW_VERSION>

3. Update src/node/desktop/package.json and lockfile

Run from src/node/desktop:

cd src/node/desktop && npm install --save-dev --save-exact electron@<NEW_VERSION>

The --save-exact flag is required — Electron must be pinned to an exact version (e.g. "electron": "39.8.5", not "^39.8.5"). This prevents uncontrolled upgrades across major/minor versions.

This updates both package.json and package-lock.json in one step. Confirm the command exits successfully (exit code 0). If it fails, report the error and stop.

After the install, verify that:

1. package.json has the exact version with no ^ or ~ prefix.
2. package-lock.json contains the new Electron version.

The lockfile must be included in the commit — if it drifts from the manifest, npm ci in CI will fail.

4. Update the allowScripts allowlist entry

src/node/desktop/package.json has an allowScripts object whose keys are exact package@version strings. The Electron entry pins the old version and is not touched by npm install, so it must be updated by hand:

"allowScripts": {
  "electron@<NEW_VERSION>": true,
  ...
}

Change the electron@<OLD_VERSION> key to electron@<NEW_VERSION>. The allowlist matches by exact package@version, so the version in the key must track the Electron dependency version precisely. If the key is left stale, npm's install-script gating (npm 12+) blocks Electron's required install script, leaving the binary unavailable and breaking desktop packaging/startup.

5. Run tests

Run from src/node/desktop:

cd src/node/desktop && npm test

Confirm the command exits successfully. If tests fail, report the failures and stop.

6. Done

Report that the Electron version has been updated and both npm i and npm test passed.