electron-winstaller marked as optionalDependency causes missing transitive dependencies in maker-squirrel #4284

Pre-flight checklist

• I have read the contribution documentation for this project.
• I agree to follow the code of conduct that this project uses.
• I have searched the issue tracker for a bug that matches the one I want to file, without success.

Forge version

7.11.2

Electron version

42.3.0

Operating system

Win11 24H2

Last known working Forge version

7.11.1

Expected behavior

electron-winstaller should be installed with a complete and consistent dependency tree, regardless of package manager, so that:

• all required transitive dependencies are reliably resolved
• behavior is consistent across npm / pnpm / yarn
• CI builds are deterministic

Actual behavior

Because electron-winstaller is an optionalDependency, its dependency resolution becomes unreliable in some package managers and environments.

Steps to reproduce

Using pnpm:

pnpm add electron-forge @electron-forge/maker-squirrel
pnpm install
pnpm electron-forge make

In pnpm environments, this results in errors similar to:

Error: Cannot find module 'lodash'

missing transitive dependencies inside electron-winstaller.

Additional information

@electron-forge/maker-squirrel depends on electron-winstaller, which is declared as an optionalDependency.
This leads to cases where electron-winstaller is installed, but its transitive dependencies are not reliably installed/resolved in certain package managers (notably pnpm), causing runtime or build failures.