grunt-build-atom-shell

Build atom-shell from Git, and rebuild native modules. This is a mostly drop-in replacement for grunt-download-atom-shell, in that, you can replace your use of it with this package at the same point in the Atom build process and everything should Just Work.

Why even would I do this?

The main reason to do this is because of atom/atom-shell#713 - trying to rename Atom after-the-fact isn't possible on Windows without some serious rigging. This package fixes that issue, as well as allows you to use arbitrary builds of Atom Shell (i.e. no more waiting for a new release for a bugfix).

Installation

Install npm package, next to your project's Gruntfile.js file:

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

Add this line to your project's Gruntfile.js:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-build-atom-shell');

Options

• buildDir - Required Where to put the downloaded atom-shell
• tag - Required A tag, branch, or commit of Atom Shell to build
• projectName - Required A short name for your project (originally 'atom')
• productName - Required The name of the final binary generated (originally 'Atom')
• targetDir - Where to put the resulting atom-shell, defaults to ./atom-shell
• config - Either 'Debug' or 'Release', defaults to 'Release'
• remoteUrl - The Git remote url to download from, defaults to official Atom Shell
• nodeVersion - The version of Node.js to use; see the section below for how to configure this

Example

Gruntfile.js

module.exports = function(grunt) {
  grunt.initConfig({
    'build-atom-shell': {
      tag: 'v0.19.5',
      nodeVersion: '0.18.0',
      buildDir: (path.env.TMPDIR || path.env.TEMP || '/tmp') + '/atom-shell',
      projectName: 'mycoolapp',
      productName: 'MyCoolApp'
    }
  });
};

Correctly setting nodeVersion

Different versions of Atom Shell expect to be linked against different versions of node.js. Since grunt-build-atom-shell allows you to use arbitrary commits of Atom Shell, there is no way for it to know which version is correct to use, so it must be explicitly provided. If you don't explicitly provide a version, we will guess the latest version, which may or may not be correct.

• 0.19.x series - 0.18.0
• 0.20.x series - 0.20.0
• 0.21.x series - 0.21.0
• 0.22.x series - 0.22.0

These numbers don't match the official node.js versions, because they also reflect patches that Atom puts into node.js to make it compatible with Chromium.