#1143·nexe

nexe with NodeJS 24 fails to bundle third-party libraries

Author: sjlonglandCreated Mar 19, 2026Updated Sep 5, 2026

Labelsbug

What happened:

We've got an existing build system that uses nexe inside the official ALpineLinux-based NodeJS Docker container that compiles an application to a native binary (mostly to hide the source code from people ignorant of the strings command in Unix). This has worked in a number of NodeJS releases up to and including NodeJS 20, but in 24, the application fails to find libraries that were installed into node_modules.

For the purpose of this bug, I've re-created the issue with a far simpler project to demonstrate the issue:

https://bitbucket.org/sjlongland/nexe-node24-poc/src/master/

The application simply uses the bunyan logger to emit a "Hello world" (bunyan is where we're seeing the issue at the moment, but other modules could be affected too.)
The Dockerfile installs dependencies needed to build NodeJS, installs nexe globally, then instructs nexe to build the project (--resource is given to bundle libraries), then the build environment is cleaned up and the resulting binary run.

In NodeJS v24, we see output like the following:

bash

rm c7e2a72525f46135ca7c4eb11f8193b3d83f32f1009816b1b13e406ed0d873eb.intermediate 6169c4abf0c93be096dd092d1dba1fd12f81e1a01d8b5bc8be809c4cdfa04a77.intermediate e36ff7e8f40280f91a81efd777c8dd2a71f4c493c5e71f8a1b7a99c4258e862d.intermediate 3c26225b195ad685fb403935f6b0da008665c66794ee6f5384ea9c9b4e24bd9a.intermediate
if [ ! -r node ] || [ ! -L node ]; then \
  ln -fs out/Release/node node; fi
- Compiling Node...
✔ Compiling Node...
- Node binary compiled
- Node binary compiled
✔ Writing result to file
- Entry: 'index.js' written to: ../../usr/local/bin/nexe-node24-poc
✔ Entry: 'index.js' written to: ../../usr/local/bin/nexe-node24-poc
- Finished in 21987.46s
✔ Finished in 21987.46s
node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1481
  throw err;
  ^

Error: Cannot find module 'bunyan'
Require stack:
- /usr/local/bin/index.js
    at Module._resolveFilename (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1478:15)
    at defaultResolveImpl (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1088:19)
    at resolveForCJSWithHooks (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1093:22)
    at Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1264:25)
    at wrapModuleLoad (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:277:19)
    at Module.require (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1578:12)
    at require (node:internal/modules/helpers:152:16)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/usr/local/bin/index.js:1:16)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1834:14)
    at Object..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1965:10) {
  code: 'MODULE_NOT_FOUND',
  requireStack: [ '/usr/local/bin/index.js' ]
}

Node.js v24.14.0
The command …snip for brevity… returned a non-zero code: 1

What you expected to happen:

Something similar to what it does on NodeJS 20:

bash

rm d95bab3b5ef5844b3a45464d8fbc0dcbcebcf2ac.intermediate 295043a7354bd9de15db47b719d89d079b40c354.intermediate 08751576e12f755f9d7e47162bed8a4c68121052.intermediate 52bdbde6c15d190f991708a45e8c722ede5ac26e.intermediate
if [ ! -r node ] || [ ! -L node ]; then \
  ln -fs out/Release/node node; fi
- Compiling Node...
✔ Compiling Node...
- Node binary compiled
- Node binary compiled
✔ Writing result to file
- Entry: 'index.js' written to: ../../usr/local/bin/nexe-node24-poc
✔ Entry: 'index.js' written to: ../../usr/local/bin/nexe-node24-poc
- Finished in 12136.867s
✔ Finished in 12136.867s
{"name":"nexe-node24-poc","hostname":"f6aa71b972bc","pid":1,"level":30,"msg":"Hello World","time":"2026-03-18T03:24:12.329Z","v":0}
 ---> Removed intermediate container f6aa71b972bc
 ---> 5bb3c5b932cd
Successfully built 5bb3c5b932cd
Successfully tagged nexe-node24-poc:node20

How to reproduce it (as minimally and precisely as possible):

bash

git clone --depth=1 https://bitbucket.org/sjlongland/nexe-node24-poc.git
cd nexe-node24-poc
docker build -t nexe-node24-poc .

Anything else we need to know?:

Environment:

Platform(OS/Version): AlpineLinux 3.23
Host Node Version: NodeJS 24.14.0
Target Node Version: NodeJS 24.14.0
Nexe version: 5.0.0-beta.4
Python Version: 3.12.12

Source: nexe/nexe

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