ember-electron application start (code hierarchy) - ember.js

Question

I'm trying to move a very old 2.x ember-electron application to new electron with ember-electron and got application window with blank screen and error in console:
(node:9061) electron: Failed to load URL: serve://dist/ with error: ERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND
The calling file ../new-ember-electron/electron-app/src/index.js has lines from old applications:
const emberAppLocation = 'serve://dist';
mainWindow.loadURL(emberAppLocation);
File ../new-ember-electron/app/router.js has:
this.route('index', { path: '/' }, function() {}
Files ../new-ember-electron/app/routes/index.js, ../new-ember-electron/app/controllers/index.js and ../new-ember-electron/app/templates/index.hbs also exist.
So, it's unclear what exactly is not found and how to find a more detailed error (application developer console doesn't have errors). But if to change the mentioned 2 lines in ../new-ember-electron/electron-app/src/index.js to:
const emberAppLocation = '../app/index.html';
mainWindow.loadFile(emberAppLocation);
then application shows content of the correct file, despite nothing working in it, even <LinkTo>...</LinkTo> is not treated as a link.
Would you please help me to understand how an ember-electron application should be structured and which way is called for the recent versions?
Used versions: node - 16.14.0, electron: 17.0.1, ember-cli: 3.28.5, ember-electron: 3.1.0, OS: darwin x64.
Thank you.
Thank you, jacobq, I've looked at your example and used emberAppUrl to start from ember-dist/index.html file. After few more changes related to require/requireNode (fixed with webPreferences options in mainWindow) the app rendered index.html file. But a problem with app location happens again right on {{ content-for "body" }} in index.html: "Uncaught Error: Cannot find module 'app-name/app'" where app-name is the application name set up as 'name' in /package.json and as 'modulePrefix' in config/environment.js. The error itself comes from /node-modules/ember-cli/lib/utilities/ember-app-utils.js, 'contentFor' function called with 'app-boot'. The ember-cli itself constructs the /app-name/app path. So, the question now is what exactly ember-cli expects to find during the boot with the new structure? Or maybe some config variable should be added to let know Ember about the /app-name/app location?
Edited:
jacobq, yes, the only difference in index.html is application name: "testapp". RootURL is set in ../testapp/config/environment.js:
podModulePrefix: 'testapp/pods',
environment,
modulePrefix: 'testapp',
rootURL: process.env.EMBER_CLI_ELECTRON ? '' : '/',
locationType: process.env.EMBER_CLI_ELECTRON ? 'hash' : 'auto',
The full error:
It happens when testapp.js file is called from index.html, on code included from ember-cli:
if (!runningTests) {
require("testapp/app")["default"].create({"LOG_TRANSITIONS":true,"LOG_TRANSITIONS_INTERNAL":true});
}

Answer 1

First thing I'd like to plug is joining the #topic-desktop channel on the Ember.js community Discord server: https://discord.com/channels/480462759797063690/488735754139336714
(it's often easier to work things out by chatting there as there's lower latency than typically found with forum post/reply platforms)
Secondly, there are lots of breaking (but good) changes between ember-electron 2.x and 3.x, so I'd encourage you to work through the upgrade guide here: https://ember-electron.js.org/docs/guides/upgrading
That said, I suspect that the problem you're seeing is related to the change from serve:// to file://. Have a look at the demo app I just spun up here:
https://github.com/jacobq/ember-electron-demo
You can see the new emberAppURL here:
https://github.com/jacobq/ember-electron-demo/blob/cf7c5dee2cd975f8c67ed1dfc61eb717461f5b7d/electron-app/src/index.js#L13
Basically, ember-electron v3.x puts the usual dist output from ember build into <project_root>/electron-app/ember-dist/ now.
FWIW, I'm actually stuck on 3.0.0-beta.2 in my application because I am using IndexedDB and don't have migration code to deal with origin-related issues of switching to file:// scheme. I don't recommend that you use that version, but you could try it if you wanted to see if that changes the error you're encountering (because that beta still uses electron-protocol-serve).