electron-installer-redhat

Create a Red Hat package for your Electron app.

Requirements

This tool requires Node 10 or greater and rpmbuild 4.13 or greater to build the .rpm package.

Note: RPM 4.13.0 or greater is required due to the boolean dependency feature.

On Fedora you can do something like this:

$ sudo dnf install rpm-build

While on Debian/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
├── package.json
├── resources
│   ├── Icon.png
│   ├── IconTemplate.png
│   └── IconTemplate@2x.png
└── 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-0.0.1-1.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-0.0.1-1.x86_64.rpm.

Programmatically

Install the package locally:

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

And write something like this:

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

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

async function main (options) {
  console.log('Creating package (this may take a while)')

  try {
    await installer(options)
    console.log(`Successfully created package at ${options.dest}`)
  } catch (err) {
    console.error(err, err.stack)
    process.exit(1)
  }
}
main(options)

You'll end up with the package at dist/installers/app-0.0.1-1.x86_64.rpm.

Note: As of 2.0.0, the Node-style callback pattern is no longer available. You can use [util.callbackify](https://nodejs.org/api/util.html#utilutil_callbackify_original) if this is required for your use case._

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.

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, one-line description of the application; do not end with a period. 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 || 1

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.arch

Type: String Default: undefined

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

options.platform

Type: String Default: Operating system platform of the host machine. For possible values see Node.js process.platform

Operating system platform the package is targeted to, used to set the --target option.

options.requires

Type: Array[String] Default: The minimum list of packages needed for Electron to run

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

All user requirements will be appended to the default array of requirements, and any duplicates will be removed.

options.homepage

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

URL of the homepage for the package, used in the URL field of the spec 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',
    'scalable': 'resources/Icon.svg',
    'symbolic': 'resources/Icon-symbolic.svg',
  }
}

Per the icon theme specification, image files must either PNGs or SVGs. The SVG format can only be used for the scalable or symbolic resolutions.

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.

If this option is specified, make sure to run update-desktop-database &> /dev/null as part of the post and postun scripts to refresh the cached database of MIME types.

options.scripts

Type: Object[String:String] Default: undefined

Path to installation scripts with their corresponding name. The files contents will be added to the spec file.

{
  scripts: {
    'pre': 'resources/pre_script',
    'post': 'resources/post_script',
    'preun': 'resources/preun_script',
    'postun': 'resources/postun_script'
  }
}

options.desktopTemplate

Type: String Default: resources/desktop.ejs

The absolute path to a custom template for the generated FreeDesktop.org desktop entry file.

Contributors

Daniel Perez Alvarez (unindented@gmail.com)

Package detail