Electron Forge

A complete tool for building modern Electron applications.

Electron Forge unifies the existing (and well maintained) build tools for Electron development into a simple, easy to use package so that anyone can jump right in to Electron development.

Getting Started

Note: Electron Forge requires Node 6 or above, plus git installed.

npm install -g electron-forge
electron-forge init my-new-app
cd my-new-app
electron-forge start

Project Goals

1. Starting with Electron should be as simple as a single command.
2. Developers shouldn't have to worry about babel, browserify, webpack, etc. Everything should "just work" for them out of the box.
3. Everything from creating the project to packaging the project for release should be handled by one dependency in a standard way while still offering users maximum choice and freedom.

With these goals in mind, under the hood this project uses electron-compile: a tool that lets you use modern and futuristic languages inside Electron without worrying about transpiling or build tooling.

Usage

Starting a new Project

npm install -g electron-forge
electron-forge init my-new-project

This command will generate a brand new project folder and install all your NPM dependencies so you will be all set to go. By default we will also install the airbnb linting modules. If you want to follow the standard linting rules instead, use the --lintstyle=standard argument.

Launching your Project

electron-forge start

Any arguments after "start" will be passed through to your application when it's launched.

Packaging your Project

electron-forge package

Yes, it really is that simple. If you want to specify platform / arch, use the --platform=<platform> and --arch=<arch> arguments.

Generating a distributable for your Project

electron-forge make

This will generate platform specific distributables (installers, distribution packages, etc.) for you. Note that you can only generate distributables for your current platform.

Linting your Project

electron-forge lint

Config

Once you have generated a project, your package.json file will have some default forge configuration. Below is the reference structure for this config object:

{
  "make_targets": {
    "win32": ["squirrel"], // An array of win32 make targets
    "darwin": ["zip", "dmg"], // An array of darwin make targets
    "linux": ["deb", "rpm", "flatpak"] // An array of linux make targets
  },
  "electronPackagerConfig": {},
  "electronWinstallerConfig": {},
  "electronInstallerDMG": {},
  "electronInstallerFlatpak": {},
  "electronInstallerDebian": {},
  "electronInstallerRedhat": {}
}

Possible make targets

Target Name	Available Platforms	Description	Configurable Options	Default?	Requirements
zip	All	Zips your packaged application	None	Yes	zip on Darwin/Linux
squirrel	Windows	Generates an installer and .nupkg files for Squirrel.Windows	electronWinstallerConfig	Yes
dmg	Darwin	Generates a DMG file	electronInstallerDMG	No
deb	Linux	Generates a Debian package	electronInstallerDebian	Yes	fakeroot and dpkg
rpm	Linux	Generates an RPM package	electronInstallerRedhat	Yes	rpm
flatpak	Linux	Generates a Flatpak file	electronInstallerFlatpak	No	flatpak-builder

Configuring package

You can set electronPackagerConfig with any of the options from Electron Packager.

NOTE: You can also set your forge config property of your package.json to point to a JS file the exports the config object:

{
  ...
  "config": {
    "forge": "./forge.config.js"
  }
  ...
}

NOTE: If you use the JSON object then the afterCopy and afterExtract options are mapped to require calls internally, so provide a path to a file that exports your hooks and they will still run. If you use the JS file method mentioned above then you can use functions normally.