electron: Unable to install Electron version >=7: EPERM: operation not permitted

Workaround:

1. start installer normally with npm install electron, installation fails with EPERM error, but creates node_modules folder
2. create folder \dist in node_modules\electron
3. download release package directly from https://github.com/electron/electron/releases
4. unzip release package to node_modules\electron\dist
5. create path.txt in node_modules\electron directory, add text: electron.exe

From this point it should work. If you re-run the installer the dist folder and path.txt will be deleted.

Colleague fixed it by edit .\node_modules@electron\get\dist\cjs\artifact-utils.js line 38 :

function getArtifactRemoteURL(details) {
    var opts = details.mirrorOptions || {};
    var base = mirrorVar('mirror', opts, BASE_URL);
    if (details.version.includes('nightly')) {
        base = mirrorVar('nightly_mirror', opts, NIGHTLY_BASE_URL);
    }
    var path = mirrorVar('customDir', opts, details.version);
   // add this line	
   path = path.substr(1);
    var file = mirrorVar('customFilename', opts, getArtifactFileName(details));
    return "" + base + path + "/" + file;
}

I had same problem, but on my environment, Remove line below from .npmrc ELECTRON_MIRROR=https://npm.taobao.org/mirrors/electron/ will solve this problem.

Was a coporate proxy problem here… To fully configure the proxy do:

export ELECTRON_GET_USE_PROXY=1
export GLOBAL_AGENT_HTTP_PROXY=http://our.proxy.com/
export GLOBAL_AGENT_HTTPS_PROXY=http://our.proxy.com/
npm i -D electron

Had the same problem and did some debugging. @electron/get handles electron downloads starting from electron 7.

Turns out you need to set ELECTRON_GET_USE_PROXY. Then @electron/get uses global-agent as proxy lib. global-agent in turn uses the env variable GLOBAL_AGENT_HTTP_PROXY to determine the proxy address.

Setting both resolved the issue for me!

PS D:\liuyunqing\project\JavaScript\WebStorm\6> npm i -D electron@latest

> electron@7.0.0 postinstall D:\liuyunqing\project\JavaScript\WebStorm\6\node_modules\electron
> node install.js

(node:18680) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Error: EPERM: operation not permitted, lstat 'C:\Users\liuyu\AppData\Local\Temp\electron-download-ZCtMMr\electron-v7.0.0-win32-x64.zip'
(node:18680) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Unhandled promise rejection. This error originated either by throwing inside of an async function without a catch block, or by rejecting a promise which was not handled with .catch(). (rejection id: 1)
(node:18680) [DEP0018] DeprecationWarning: Unhandled promise rejections are deprecated. In the future, promise rejections that are not handled will terminate the Node.js process with a non-zero exit code.

yes,now i have to install electron@6.1.3 instead