nx-electron 11: No assets leads to webpack config error

[patdx]

Describe the bug

I upgraded an nx-electron app to v11 which was working fine before. It has a config like below:

        "build": {
          "builder": "nx-electron:build",
          "options": {
            "externalDependencies": [
              "electron"
            ],
            "main": "apps/desktop-app-main/src/main.ts",
            "outputPath": "dist/apps/desktop-app-main",
            "tsConfig": "apps/desktop-app-main/tsconfig.app.json",
            "webpackConfig": "tools/scripts/webpack/config-desktop-app-main.js"
          },

I guess there was previously an assets setting which I deleted since I was not using it.

Seems like even if it is gone, in the builder it is normalized to an empty array. Probably it gets normalized based on this schema.json?

nx-electron/src/builders/build/schema.json

Line 37 in f741582

"assets": {

So when I run nx build desktop-app-main, it checks if options.assets is truthy (it is), and tries to init the copy-webpack-plugin.

Since the array is empty, copy-webpack-plugin throws an error:

Invalid options object. Copy Plugin has been initialized using an options object that does not match the API schema.
 - options.patterns should be an non-empty array.

I can patch the nx-electron builder easily to get the desired result:

-    if (options.assets) {
+    if (options.assets && options.assets.length >= 1) {

Adding any kind of "stub" file/folder to the assets array fixes the issue too 😃

But I think ultimately, it would be nice to not throw an error if someone does the same thing as I did.

To Reproduce

1. Clone this repo: https://github.com/patdx/nx-electron-test
2. Run npm install and then npx nx build main

Note: I noticed when I tried to reproduce with a fresh workspace above that by default nx-electron inits an empty assets folder, so I guess this would only happen if someone tries to delete the assets config line (and forgets about it).

Expected behavior

I expect to be able to build the main app using nx build desktop-app-main even if no asset config is specified.

Screenshots

I attached some screenshots above.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Ubuntu via Windows WSL2
• Nx Electron Version v11.0.0

[bennymeg]

Thank you for the detailed explanation and for fixing the issue!
I will merge it soon.