nwjs-builder-phoenix

A possible solution to build and package a ready for distribution NW.js app for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Why Bother?

We already had nw-builder, but it has made little progress on the way, and nwjs-builder has been hard to continue due to personal and historic reasons.

electron-builder inspired me when I became an Electron user later, loose files excluding, various target formats, auto updater, artifacts publishing and code signing, amazing!

Although NW.js has much lesser popularity than Electron, and is really troubled by historic headaches, let's have something modern.

Features

• Building for Windows, macOS and Linux
  • Common: zip, 7z
  • Windows: nsis, nsis7z
  • macOS: TODO
  • Linux: TODO
• Building for different platforms concurrently
• Configurable executable fields and icons for Windows and macOS
• Exclusion of loose files from node_modules
• Chrome App support
• nwjs-ffmpeg-prebuilt integration
• Auto Updater
• TODO Rebuilding native modules
• TODO Code signing
• Ideas appreciated :)

Getting Started

• Make sure your NW.js project has a valid package.json (e.g. generated by npm init), and have basic fields like name, description and version filled.

• For apps destined for Mac, providing a product_string in the package.json will allow the Helper app to be renamed for you.

• Install nwjs-builder-phoenix as a devDependencies of your NW.js project as follows:

# Optional wine for building for Windows on other platforms.
# The command may differ in different Linux distributions.
#sudo apt-get install wine
npm install nwjs-builder-phoenix --save-dev

By installing it locally, build and run commands will be available in npm scripts. You can access option lists via ./node_modules/.bin/{ build, run } --help.

DO NOT install it globally, as the command names are just too common.

• Add build properties at the root of the package.json, for example:

// package.json
{
    "build": {
        "nwVersion": "0.14.7"
    }
}

This will specify the NW.js version we are using. See more in the following Options section.

• Add some helper npm scripts, for example:

// package.json
{
    "scripts": {
        // Deprecated. "dist": "build --win --mac --linux --x86 --x64 --mirror https://dl.nwjs.io/ .",
        "dist": "build --tasks win-x86,win-x64,linux-x86,linux-x64,mac-x64 --mirror https://dl.nwjs.io/ .",
        "start": "run --x86 --mirror https://dl.nwjs.io/ ."
    }
}

The above code snippet enables npm run dist and npm run start/npm start. The former builds for all major platforms and both x86 and x64 arch, and the latter runs the project with x86 binaries, both with the specified version of NW.js and use specified mirror to accelerate the download.

• Well done.

This should be the common use case, read the following Options section and FAQs if something is missing.

See also sample project and test cases for reference.

Options

Passing and managing commandline arguments can be painful. In nwjs-builder-phoenix, we configure via the build property of the package.json of your NW.js project.

Also see all available options here.

Differences to nwjs-builder

• nwjs-builder-phoenix queries versions.json only when a symbol like lts, stable or latest is used to specify a version.
• nwjs-builder-phoenix uses rcedit instead of node-resourcehacker, thus it's up to you to create proper .ico files with different sizes.
• nwjs-builder-phoenix supports node.js 4.x and later versions only.
• nwjs-builder-phoenix writes with TypeScript and benefits from strong typing and async/await functions.

Development

git clone https://github.com/evshiron/nwjs-builder-phoenix
cd nwjs-builder-phoenix
npm install

npm test

By the way, I use some custom strings in NSIS scripts which might not be fully translated, if anyone is interested in translating them into languages that aren't available, feel free to fork and send PRs.

Available Mirrors

If you have difficulties connecting to the official download source, you can specify a mirror via --mirror argument of both build and run, or by setting NWJS_MIRROR environment variable. Environment variables like HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY and ALL_PROXY should be useful too.

• China Mainland
  • https://npm.taobao.org/mirrors/nwjs/
• Singapore
  • https://cnpmjs.org/mirrors/nwjs/

License

MIT.

install 파일 생성 샘플 프로젝트

소스 폴더: assets/project 폴더 내용을 install 파일로 만듬
빌드 실행: npm run sample
빌드 결과: dist_sample

디버깅

• package.json 파일 옵션 설정

  "nsis": {
      // 생성된 nsi 파일을 삭제하지 않음
      "scriptFile": true
  }

• 콘솔창에서 nsi 파일 경로(temp 폴더)를 확인한 뒤
• assets/scriptFileDebug.nsi 에 복사
• HM NIS Edit 프로그램에서 nsi 파일을 열고 컴파일 및 디버깅