electron-installer-windows

electron-installer-windows

Create a Windows package for your Electron app.

Installation

For use from command-line:

$ npm install -g electron-installer-windows

For use in npm scripts or programmatically:

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

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 Windows:

$ electron-packager . app --platform win32 --arch x64 --out dist/

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

.
└── dist
    └── app-win32-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 Windows package that your users can install?

Command-Line

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

$ npm install -g electron-installer-windows

And point it to your built app:

$ electron-installer-windows --src dist/app-linux-x64/ --dest dist/installers/ --arch amd64

You'll end up with the package at dist/installers/app_0.0.1_amd64.deb.

Scripts

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

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

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/",
    "deb64": "electron-installer-windows --src dist/app-linux-x64/ --dest dist/installers/ --arch amd64"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "electron-installer-windows": "*",
    "electron-packager": "*",
    "electron-prebuilt": "*"
  }
}

And run the script:

$ npm run deb64

You'll end up with the package at dist/installers/app_0.0.1_amd64.deb.

Programmatically

Install the package locally:

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

And write something like this:

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

var options = {
  src: 'dist/app-linux-x64/',
  dest: 'dist/installers/',
  arch: 'amd64'
}

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_amd64.deb.

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",
  "tags": [
    "Utility"
  ]
}

And pass that instead with the config option:

$ electron-installer-windows --src dist/app-linux-x64/ --arch amd64 --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 Windows 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 id field of the nuspec file.

options.productName

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

Name of the application (e.g. Atom), used in the title field of the nuspec file.

options.description

Type: String Default: package.description

Short description of the application, used in the summary field of the nuspec file.

options.productDescription

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

Long description of the application, used in the description field of the nuspec file.

options.version

Type: String Default: package.version

Long description of the application, used in the version field of the nuspec file.

options.copyright

Type: String Default: package.copyright

Copyright details for the package, used in the copyright field of the nuspec file.

options.authors

Type: Array[String] Default: package.author

List of authors of the package, used in the authors field of the spec file.

options.owners

Type: Array[String] Default: package.author

List of owners of the package, used in the authors 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 projectUrl field of the spec file.

options.iconUrl

Type: String Default: undefined

URL for the image to use as the icon for the package in the Manage NuGet Packages dialog box, used in the iconUrl field of the spec file.

options.licenseUrl

Type: String Default: undefined

URL for the license that the package is under, used in the licenseUrl field of the spec file.

options.requireLicenseAcceptance

Type: String Default: false

Whether the client needs to ensure that the package license (described by licenseUrl) is accepted before the package is installed, used in the requireLicenseAcceptance field of the spec file.

options.tags

Type: Array[String] Default: []

List of tags and keywords that describe the package, used in the tags field of the spec file.

Maintenance

Squirrel

Current version: 1.2.3

To update Squirrel to the latest version:

$ rm vendor/squirrel/*
$ mono vendor/nuget/NuGet.exe install squirrel.windows -OutputDirectory vendor/tmp/
$ cp -r vendor/tmp/squirrel.windows.1.2.3/tools/* vendor/squirrel/
$ rm -rf vendor/tmp/

NuGet

Current version: 2.8.5

To update NuGet to the latest version, head over to the releases page.

Meta

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

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.