bavulapati / electron-forge-docs

:electron: Mirror for Electron Forge's GitBook documentation

description
Quickly scaffold an Electron project with a full build pipeline

Getting Started

Overview

Electron Forge is an all-in-one tool for packaging and distributing Electron applications. It combines many single-purpose packages to create a full build pipeline that works out of the box, complete with code signing, installers, and artifact publishing. For advanced workflows, custom build logic can be added in the Forge lifecycle through its Plugin API. Custom build and storage targets can be handled by creating your own Makers and Publishers.

Creating a new app

To get started with Electron Forge, we first need to initialize a new project with create-electron-app. This script is a convenient wrapper around Forge's Init command.

{% tabs %} {% tab title="Yarn" %}

yarn create electron-app my-app

{% endtab %}

{% tab title="npm" %}

npm init electron-app@latest my-app

{% endtab %} {% endtabs %}

{% hint style="warning" %} If you used the create-electron-app script before during Forge 6.0.0-beta, we recommend you uninstall the package globally before running the command again.

yarn global remove create-electron-app
# or
npm uninstall -g create-electron-app

{% endhint %}

Using templates

Forge's initialization scripts can add additional template code with the --template=[template-name] flag.

{% tabs %} {% tab title="yarn" %}

yarn create electron-app my-app --template=webpack

{% endtab %}

{% tab title="npm" %}

npm init electron-app@latest my-app -- --template=webpack

{% endtab %} {% endtabs %}

There are currently two first-party templates:

• webpack
• webpack-typescript

Both of these templates are built around the Webpack Plugin, which bundles your JavaScript code for production and includes a dev server to provide a better development experience. The webpack-typescript template also wires up your project for TypeScript support.

{% hint style="info" %} We highly recommend using these templates when initializing your app to take advantage of modern front-end JavaScript tooling. {% endhint %}

To learn more about authoring your own templates for Electron Forge, check out the Writing Templates guide!

Starting your app

You should now have a directory called my-app with all the files you need for a basic Electron app.

{% tabs %} {% tab title="Yarn" %}

cd my-app
yarn start

{% endtab %}

{% tab title="npm" %}

cd my-app
npm start

{% endtab %} {% endtabs %}

Building distributables

So you've got an amazing application there, and you want to package it all up and share it with the world. If you run the make script, Electron Forge will generate you platform specific distributables for you to share with everyone. For more information on what kind of distributables you can make, check out the Makers documentation.

{% tabs %} {% tab title="yarn" %}

yarn make

{% endtab %}

{% tab title="npm" %}

npm run make

{% endtab %} {% endtabs %}

Publishing your app

Now you have distributables that you can share with your users. If you run the publish script, Electron Forge will then publish the platform-specific distributables for you, using the publishing method of your choice. For more information on what publishers we currently support, check out the Publishers documentation.

{% tabs %} {% tab title="yarn" %}

yarn run publish

{% endtab %}

{% tab title="npm" %}

npm run publish

{% endtab %} {% endtabs %}

Advanced Usage

Once you've got a basic app starting, building and publishing, it's time to add your custom configuration, which can be done in the forge.config.js file. Configuration options are specified in the Configuration Docs.

You can also check out the documentation on some of our more advanced features like:

• Adding plugins
• Debugging your app
• Writing your own makers, publishers and plugins