electron-installer-redhat

electron-installer-redhat

Create a Red Hat package for your Electron app.

Requirements

This tool requires rpmbuild to build the .rpm package. On Fedora you can do something like this:

$ sudo dnf install rpm-build

While on Ubuntu you'll need to do this instead:

$ sudo apt-get install rpm

Installation

For use from command-line:

$ npm install -g electron-installer-redhat

For use in npm scripts or programmatically:

$ npm install --save-dev electron-installer-redhat

Usage

Say your Electron app lives in path/to/app, and has a structure like this:

.
├── LICENSE
├── README.md
├── node_modules
│   ├── electron-packager
│   └── electron-prebuilt
├── package.json
├── resources
│   ├── Icon.png
│   ├── IconTemplate.png
│   └── [e-mail]
└── src
    ├── index.js
    ├── main
    │   └── index.js
    └── renderer
        ├── index.html
        └── index.js

You now run electron-packager to build the app for Red Hat:

$ electron-packager . app --platform linux --arch x64 --out dist/

And you end up with something like this in your dist folder:

.
└── dist
    └── app-linux-x64
        ├── LICENSE
        ├── LICENSES.chromium.html
        ├── content_shell.pak
        ├── app
        ├── icudtl.dat
        ├── libgcrypt.so.11
        ├── libnode.so
        ├── locales
        ├── natives_blob.bin
        ├── resources
        ├── snapshot_blob.bin
        └── version

How do you turn that into a Red Hat package that your users can install?

Command-Line

If you want to run electron-installer-redhat straight from the command-line, install the package globally:

$ npm install -g electron-installer-redhat

And point it to your built app:

$ electron-installer-redhat --src dist/app-linux-x64/ --dest dist/installers/ --arch x86_64

You'll end up with the package at dist/installers/app_0.0.1_x86_64.rpm.

Scripts

If you want to run electron-installer-redhat through npm, install the package locally:

$ npm install --save-dev electron-installer-redhat

Edit the scripts section of your package.json:

{
  "name": "app",
  "description": "An awesome app!",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "scripts": {
    "start": "electron .",
    "build": "electron-packager . app --platform linux --arch x64 --out dist/",
    "rpm64": "electron-installer-redhat --src dist/app-linux-x64/ --dest dist/installers/ --arch x86_64"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "electron-installer-redhat": "*",
    "electron-packager": "*",
    "electron-prebuilt": "*"
  }
}

And run the script:

$ npm run rpm64

You'll end up with the package at dist/installers/app_0.0.1_x86_64.rpm.

Programmatically

Install the package locally:

$ npm install --save-dev electron-installer-redhat

And write something like this:

var installer = require('electron-installer-redhat')

var options = {
  src: 'dist/app-linux-x64/',
  dest: 'dist/installers/',
  arch: 'x86_64'
}

console.log('Creating package (this may take a while)')

installer(options, function (err) {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err, err.stack)
    process.exit(1)
  }

  console.log('Successfully created package at ' + options.dest)
})

You'll end up with the package at dist/installers/app_0.0.1_x86_64.rpm.

Options

Even though you can pass most of these options through the command-line interface, it may be easier to create a configuration file:

{
  "dest": "dist/installers/",
  "icon": "resources/Icon.png",
  "categories": [
    "Utility"
  ]
}

And pass that instead with the config option:

$ electron-installer-redhat --src dist/app-linux-x64/ --arch x86_64 --config config.json

Anyways, here's the full list of options:

src

Type: String Default: undefined

Path to the folder that contains your built Electron application.

dest

Type: String Default: undefined

Path to the folder that will contain your Red Hat installer.

rename

Type: Function Default: function (dest, src) { return path.join(dest, src); }

Function that renames all files generated by the task just before putting them in your dest folder.

options.name

Type: String Default: package.name

Name of the package (e.g. atom), used in the Name field of the spec file.

Check out the Fedora Naming Guidelines.

options.productName

Type: String Default: package.productName || package.name

Name of the application (e.g. Atom), used in the Name field of the desktop specification.

options.genericName

Type: String Default: package.genericName || package.productName || package.name

Generic name of the application (e.g. Text Editor), used in the GenericName field of the desktop specification.

options.description

Type: String Default: package.description

Short description of the application, used in the Summary field of the spec file.

options.productDescription

Type: String Default: package.productDescription || package.description

Long description of the application, used in the %description tag of the spec file.

options.version

Type: String Default: package.version

Version number of the package, used in the Version field of the spec file.

options.revision

Type: String Default: package.revision

Revision number of the package, used in the Release field of the spec file.

options.license

Type: String Default: package.license

License of the package, used in the License field of the spec file.

options.group

Type: String Default: undefined

Group of the package, used in the Group field of the spec file.

options.arch

Type: String Default: undefined

Machine architecture the package is targeted to, used to set the --target option.

options.requires

Type: Array[String] Default: ['lsb']

Packages that are required when the program starts, used in the Requires field of the spec file.

options.homepage

Type: String Default: package.homepage || package.author.url

URL of the homepage for the package, used in the Homepage field of the control specification.

options.compressionLevel

Type: Number Default: 2

Package compression level, from 0 to 9.

options.bin

Type: String Default: package.name

Relative path to the executable that will act as binary for the application, used in the Exec field of the desktop specification.

The generated package will contain a symlink /usr/bin/<%= options.name %> pointing to the path provided here.

For example, providing this configuration:

{
  src: '...',
  dest: '...',
  name: 'foo',
  bin: 'resources/cli/launcher.sh'
}

Will create a package with the following symlink:

usr/bin/foo@ -> ../share/foo/resources/cli/launcher/sh

And a desktop specification with the following Exec key:

Exec=foo %U

options.execArguments

Type: Array[String] Default: []

Command-line arguments to pass to the executable. Will be added to the Exec field of the desktop specification.

options.icon

Type: String or Object[String:String] Default: undefined

Path to a single image that will act as icon for the application:

{
  icon: 'resources/Icon.png'
}

Or multiple images with their corresponding resolutions:

{
  icon: {
    '48x48': 'resources/Icon48.png',
    '64x64': 'resources/Icon64.png',
    '128x128': 'resources/Icon128.png',
    '256x256': 'resources/Icon256.png'
  }
}

options.categories

Type: Array[String] Default: []

Categories in which the application should be shown in a menu, used in the Categories field of the desktop specification.

For possible values check out the Desktop Menu Specification.

options.mimeType

Type: Array[String] Default: []

MIME types the application is able to open, used in the MimeType field of the desktop specification.

Meta

• Code: git clone git://github.com/unindented/electron-installer-redhat.git
• Home: https://github.com/unindented/electron-installer-redhat/

Contributors

• Daniel Perez Alvarez ([e-mail])

License

Copyright (c) 2016 Daniel Perez Alvarez (unindented.org). This is free software, and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the LICENSE file.