Introducing Electron

Chapter 4. Binaries, Installers, and Updates

During development, an Electron application behaves just like a Node process. The Electron runtime, launched by executing Electron.exe or Electron.app, loads the entry point JavaScript file and only then starts behaving like “your” application. However, once you ship your application to users, the name Electron should never show up in any Windows task manager or macOS activity monitor. You will likely also want to change the icon and create a single installer file, ready to be downloaded by potential customers.

Shipping an Electron application therefore consists of two steps. First, the application needs to be packaged. In this process, a binary with the app’s name and icon is created for each platform, bundling up the whole application, including all JavaScript files and dependencies. Then, installers need to be created. In the spirit of Node.js development, the solution for both tasks comes in the form of npm modules. Traditionally, developers would use bite-sized modules to build custom build pipelines, combining modules such as electron-packager, electron-winstaller, or electron-installer-dmg into artisanal scripts. As interest in Electron grew and support for more distribution methods was added, creating a build pipeline from scratch became an increasingly daunting task. To solve that problem, the community has started work on a CLI tool called electron-forge. Its ability to support developers with automatic scaffolding, rebuilding ...