If you experience something like this when installing electron:
~/code/try-electron$ npm install electron
npm ERR! code 1
npm ERR! path /home/liusida/code/try-electron/node_modules/electron
npm ERR! command failed
npm ERR! command sh -c node install.js
npm ERR! RequestError: Socket connection timeout
npm ERR! at ClientRequest.<anonymous> (/home/liusida/code/try-electron/node_modules/got/dist/source/core/index.js:970:111)
npm ERR! at Object.onceWrapper (node:events:626:26)
npm ERR! at ClientRequest.emit (node:events:523:35)
npm ERR! at origin.emit (/home/liusida/code/try-electron/node_modules/@szmarczak/http-timer/dist/source/index.js:43:20)
npm ERR! at TLSSocket.socketErrorListener (node:_http_client:495:9)
npm ERR! at TLSSocket.emit (node:events:511:28)
npm ERR! at emitErrorNT (node:internal/streams/destroy:151:8)
npm ERR! at emitErrorCloseNT (node:internal/streams/destroy:116:3)
npm ERR! at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:82:21)
npm ERR! at new NodeError (node:internal/errors:399:5)
npm ERR! at internalConnectMultiple (node:net:1099:20)
npm ERR! at Timeout.internalConnectMultipleTimeout (node:net:1638:3)
npm ERR! at listOnTimeout (node:internal/timers:575:11)
npm ERR! at process.processTimers (node:internal/timers:514:7)
npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in: /home/liusida/.npm/_logs/2023-06-01T12_35_24_835Z-debug-0.log
Or something like this:
PS C:\code\try-electron> npm install electron
RequestError: connect ETIMEDOUT 20.205.243.166:443
at ClientRequest.<anonymous> (C:\code\try-electron\node_modules\got\dist\source\core\index.js:970:111)
at Object.onceWrapper (node:events:628:26)
at ClientRequest.emit (node:events:525:35)
at origin.emit (C:\code\try-electron\node_modules\@szmarczak\http-timer\dist\source\index.js:43:20)
at TLSSocket.socketErrorListener (node:_http_client:502:9)
at TLSSocket.emit (node:events:513:28)
at emitErrorNT (node:internal/streams/destroy:151:8)
at emitErrorCloseNT (node:internal/streams/destroy:116:3)
at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:82:21)
at TCPConnectWrap.afterConnect [as oncomplete] (node:net:1494:16)
Remember, it is not your fault! It is due to the GFW!
ElectronJS only stores some scripts on npmjs’s server. When executin npm install electron, it first fetches those scripts. The package.json file defines "postinstall": "node install.js". And in install.js, it downloads artifacts (a .zip file) from GitHub (the url, for example, is like ) and extract it into a subfolder called dist. If any problem arises, npm will delete all the folders, leaving you without an opportunity to manually rectify this issue.
To address this, you can use npm install electron --ignore-scripts to prevent npm from calling node install.js. Then, you can try using node ./node_modules/electron/install.js to see if there’s any luck. Otherwise, try to download 'https://github.com/electron/electron/releases/download/v25.0.1/electron-v25.0.1-linux-x64.zip' or https://github.com/electron/electron/releases/download/v25.0.1/electron-v25.0.1-win32-x64.zip manually, and extract them into a folder called dist, and copy that folder into the electron folder as ./node_modules/electron/dist/. Finally, create a path.txt in the folder .node_modules/electron/, the content of the path.txt is simply the name of the electron executable, such as electron.exe for Windows and electron for Linux.
Hope this helps.
P.S. An even better solution was found here on StackOverflow by using an additional package cross-env like this: npx cross-env ELECTRON_GET_USE_PROXY=true GLOBAL_AGENT_HTTPS_PROXY=http://127.0.0.1:7890 npm install. Cheers!