Electron Forge 8 marks six changes as breaking, chief among them a move to Node 22 and ESM

The npm trusted publishing change belongs to the project's own release pipeline. It is filed under the ci prefix ^[6], the same prefix the log uses for a faster Windows build drive, a CI .nvmrc file and an upgrade of its actions/* steps ^[7]. Those entries change how Forge's maintainers build and publish their packages ^[6][7]. Nothing in them alters a command, an API or a config key that a desktop team writes, so trusted publishing does not belong on an app team's migration list.

The global module templates removal does belong on that list, for fewer teams. It is filed under core and carries the breaking marker ^[1]. By its wording, it reaches projects whose setup drew templates from globally installed modules ^[1].

Node 22 and ESM is the change every project meets. It arrives as one entry, "feat!: Node 22 + ESM" ^[2]. Later entries pruned the final require calls, made the webpack plugin's imports ESM-compatible and switched the project template to moduleResolution: bundler ^[11]. If Node 22 is a minimum, as the breaking marker suggests, the change reaches past application code into CI images and developer machines. The notes do not say whether CommonJS configuration files still load, or how long the previous major will receive fixes.

The Vite plugin adds a second upgrade inside the first. Earlier in the same cycle, Dependabot was still bumping Vite within the 5.4 series, from 5.4.20 to 5.4.21 ^[9]. If a project's build tracked that series, moving to the plugin's Vite 8 means crossing three Vite major versions in one step ^[15]. The plugin's production builds also now run in isolated subprocesses ^[10].

Authorship in this log is concentrated. All six breaking entries are credited to one contributor, erickzhao ^[13], who appears on 50 of the 67 entries listed ^[19][20], about three in four ^[14]. MarshallOfSound is next, with nine ^[18].

The branch history bears on timing. The 8 work ran on a separate next branch, and the log includes a forward-ports entry ^[12]. Both suggest the previous line was still maintained while 8 was built. In my view that makes this quarter's decision one of sequencing. A team with several Forge apps that trials Node 22 and ESM on one of them now learns how far the module change reaches into its own code. I'd expect the rest of its portfolio to follow next quarter as mostly config and scaffolding work.