A good bit of time has passed since I originally posted this question. I'll answer it myself in case my mistake can assist anyone.
I never got a "solution" to the original problem. At a much later date I switched across to the npm release of the sdk and it worked.
But before that time I'd hit this issue again. Luckily, by then, I'd added a logger that also wrote console to file. With it I noticed that a JavaScript syntax error caused the crash. e.g. Missing closing bracket, etc.
I suspect that's what caused my original problem. But the Chrome dev tools do the worst thing by blanking the console rather than preserve it when the tools crash.
Code I used to setup a logger
/*global window */
const winston = require('winston');
const prettyMs = require('pretty-ms');
/**
* Proxy the standard 'console' object and redirect it toward a logger.
*/
class Logger {
constructor() {
// Retain a reference to the original console
this.originalConsole = window.console;
this.timers = new Map([]);
// Configure a logger
this.logger = winston.createLogger({
level: 'info',
format: winston.format.combine(
winston.format.timestamp(),
winston.format.printf(({ level, message, timestamp }) => {
return `${timestamp} ${level}: ${message}`;
})
),
transports: [
new winston.transports.File(
{
filename: `${require('electron').remote.app.getPath('userData')}/logs/downloader.log`, // Note: require('electron').remote is undefined when I include it in the normal imports
handleExceptions: true, // Log unhandled exceptions
maxsize: 1048576, // 10 MB
maxFiles: 10
}
)
]
});
const _this = this;
// Switch out the console with a proxied version
window.console = new Proxy(this.originalConsole, {
// Override the console functions
get(target, property) {
// Leverage the identical logger functions
if (['debug', 'info', 'warn', 'error'].includes(property)) return (...parameters) => {
_this.logger[property](parameters);
// Simple approach to logging to console. Initially considered
// using a custom logger. But this is much easier to implement.
// Downside is that the format differs but I can live with that
_this.originalConsole[property](...parameters);
}
// The log function differs in logger so map it to info
if ('log' === property) return (...parameters) => {
_this.logger.info(parameters);
_this.originalConsole.info(...parameters);
}
// Re-implement the time and timeEnd functions
if ('time' === property) return (label) => _this.timers.set(label, window.performance.now());
if ('timeEnd' === property) return (label) => {
const now = window.performance.now();
if (!_this.timers.has(label)) {
_this.logger.warn(`console.timeEnd('${label}') called without preceding console.time('${label}')! Or console.timeEnd('${label}') has been called more than once.`)
}
const timeTaken = prettyMs(now - _this.timers.get(label));
_this.timers.delete(label);
const message = `${label} ${timeTaken}`;
_this.logger.info(message);
_this.originalConsole.info(message);
}
// Any non-overriden functions are passed to console
return target[property];
}
});
}
}
/**
* Calling this function switches the window.console for a proxied version.
* The proxy allows us to redirect the call to a logger.
*/
function switchConsoleToLogger() { new Logger(); } // eslint-disable-line no-unused-vars
Then in index.html I load this script first
<script src="js/logger.js"></script>
<script>switchConsoleToLogger()</script>
