Atom Shell Installer Grunt Plugin

Grunt plugin that builds Windows installers for Atom Shell apps using Squirrel.

Installing

npm install --save-dev grunt-atom-shell-installer

Configuring

In your Gruntfile.coffee or Gruntfile.js add the following:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-atom-shell-installer')

Then assuming you have an Atom Shell app built at the given appDirectory, you can configure the installer task like so:

'create-windows-installer': {
  appDirectory: '/tmp/build/my-app',
  outputDirectory: '/tmp/build/installer',
  authors: 'My App Inc.',
  exe: 'myapp.exe'
}

Then run grunt create-windows-installer and you will have an .nupkg, a RELEASES file, and a .exe installer file in the outputDirectory folder.

There are several configuration settings supported:

| Config Name | Required | Description | | --------------------- | -------- | ----------- | | appDirectory | Yes | The folder path of your Atom Shell-based app | | outputDirectory | No | The folder path to create the .exe installer in. Defaults to the installer folder at the project root. | | loadingGif | No | The local path to a .gif file to display during install. | | authors | Yes | The authors value for the nuget package metadata. Defaults to the author field from your app's package.json file when unspecified. | | owners | No | The owners value for the nuget package metadata. Defaults to the authors field when unspecified. | | exe | No | The name of your app's main .exe file. This uses the name field in your app's package.json file with an added .exe extension when unspecified. | | description | No | The description value for the nuget package metadata. Defaults to the description field from your app's package.json file when unspecified. | | version | No | The version value for the nuget package metadata. Defaults to the version field from your app's package.json file when unspecified. | | title | No | The title value for the nuget package metadata. Defaults to the productName field and then the name field from your app's package.json file when unspecified. | | certificateFile | No | The path to an Authenticode Code Signing Certificate | | certificatePassword | No | The password to decrypt the certificate given in certificateFile | | signWithParams | No | Params to pass to signtool. Overrides certificateFile and certificatePassword. | | setupIcon | No | The ICO file to use as the icon for the generated Setup.exe | | remoteReleases | No | A URL to your existing updates. If given, these will be downloaded to create delta updates |

Sign your installer or else bad things will happen

For development / internal use, creating installers without a signature is okay, but for a production app you need to sign your application. Internet Explorer's SmartScreen filter will block your app from being downloaded, and many anti-virus vendors will consider your app as malware unless you obtain a valid cert.

Any certificate valid for "Authenticode Code Signing" will work here, but if you get the right kind of code certificate, you can also opt-in to Windows Error Reporting. This MSDN page has the latest links on where to get a WER-compatible certificate. The "Standard Code Signing" certificate is sufficient for this purpose.