Skip to content

Multi Platform Build

Info

Don’t expect that you can build app for all platforms on one platform.

  • If your app has native dependency, it can be compiled only on the target platform unless prebuild is not used.

    prebuild is a solution, but most node modules don’t provide prebuilt binaries.

  • macOS Code Signing works only on macOS. Cannot be fixed.

Free public Electron Build Service is used to build Electron app for Linux on Windows. On macOS/Linux you can build Electron app for Windows locally, except Appx for Windows Store (in the future (feel free to file issue) electron-build-service will support Appx target).

You can use build servers — e.g. Travis to build macOS/Linux apps and AppVeyor to build Windows app.

By default build for current platform and current arch. Use CLI flags --mac, --win, --linux to specify platforms. And --ia32, --x64 to specify arch.

For example, to build app for MacOS, Windows and Linux: 

electron-builder -mwl

Build performed in parallel, so, it is highly recommended to not use npm task per platform (e.g. npm run dist:mac && npm run dist:win32), but specify multiple platforms/targets in one build command. You don’t need to clean dist output before build — output directory is cleaned automatically.

Sample .travis.yml to Build Electron App for macOS, Linux and Windows

sample .travis.yml 
matrix:
  include:
    - os: osx
      osx_image: xcode10.2
      language: node_js
      node_js: "10"
      env:
        - ELECTRON_CACHE=$HOME/.cache/electron
        - ELECTRON_BUILDER_CACHE=$HOME/.cache/electron-builder

    - os: linux
      services: docker
      language: generic

cache:
  directories:
    - node_modules
    - $HOME/.cache/electron
    - $HOME/.cache/electron-builder

script:
  - |
    if [ "$TRAVIS_OS_NAME" == "linux" ]; then
      docker run --rm \
        --env-file <(env | grep -iE 'DEBUG|NODE_|ELECTRON_|YARN_|NPM_|CI|CIRCLE|TRAVIS|APPVEYOR_|CSC_|_TOKEN|_KEY|AWS_|STRIP|BUILD_') \
        -v ${PWD}:/project \
        -v ~/.cache/electron:/root/.cache/electron \
        -v ~/.cache/electron-builder:/root/.cache/electron-builder \
        electronuserland/builder:wine \
        /bin/bash -c "yarn --link-duplicates --pure-lockfile && yarn release --linux --win"
    else
      yarn release
    fi
before_cache:
  - rm -rf $HOME/.cache/electron-builder/wine

branches:
  except:
    - "/^v\\d+\\.\\d+\\.\\d+$/"

Sample appveyor.yml to Build Electron App for Windows

Use AppVeyor only if: * you need to build AppX, * or your app has native dependency and prebuilt binary is not provided.

Otherwise see above sample .travis.yml to build Windows on Linux using provided Docker image.

sample appveyor.yml 
image: Visual Studio 2017

platform:
  - x64

cache:
  - node_modules
  - '%USERPROFILE%\.electron'

init:
  - git config --global core.autocrlf input

install:
  - ps: Install-Product node 10 x64
  - yarn

build_script:
  - yarn dist

test: off

macOS

All required system dependencies (except rpm) will be downloaded automatically on demand on macOS 10.12+ (macOS Sierra). On Travis, please add osx_image: xcode10.2 (see above sample .travis.yml).

To build rpm: brew install rpm (brew).

Linux

You can use Docker to avoid installing system dependencies.

To build app in distributable format for Linux: 

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y libopenjp2-tools

To build rpm: sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y rpm (or sudo yum install rpm-build).

To build pacman: sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y bsdtar.

To build snap if and only if you have custom stage packages (if you don’t have custom snap build configuration, you don’t need to install). See snapcraft in Store. 

sudo snap install snapcraft --classic
sudo snap install multipass --beta --classic

To build app for Windows on Linux:

Docker (electronuserland/builder:wine) is recommended to avoid installing system dependencies.

  • Install Wine (2.0+ is required) — see WineHQ Binary Packages.
  • Install Mono (4.2+ is required) if you want to use Squirrel.Windows (NSIS, default target, doesn’t require mono).

To build app in 32 bit from a machine with 64 bit:

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y gcc-multilib g++-multilib

Travis Linux

Xenial is required. 

sudo: required
dist: xenial

Travis macOS

macOS 10.14+ is required. 

osx_image: xcode10.2

Docker

To build Linux or Windows on any platform.

Warning

You cannot build for Windows using Docker if you have native dependencies and native dependency doesn’t use prebuild.

See example Docker usage on a CI server in the sample .travis.yml.

Note

Do not use Docker Toolbox on macOS. Only Docker for Mac works.

Build Electron App using Docker on a Local Machine

  1. Run docker container:

    docker run --rm -ti \
 --env-file <(env | grep -iE 'DEBUG|NODE_|ELECTRON_|YARN_|NPM_|CI|CIRCLE|TRAVIS_TAG|TRAVIS|TRAVIS_REPO_|TRAVIS_BUILD_|TRAVIS_BRANCH|TRAVIS_PULL_REQUEST_|APPVEYOR_|CSC_|GH_|GITHUB_|BT_|AWS_|STRIP|BUILD_') \
 --env ELECTRON_CACHE="/root/.cache/electron" \
 --env ELECTRON_BUILDER_CACHE="/root/.cache/electron-builder" \
 -v ${PWD}:/project \
 -v ${PWD##*/}-node-modules:/project/node_modules \
 -v ~/.cache/electron:/root/.cache/electron \
 -v ~/.cache/electron-builder:/root/.cache/electron-builder \
 electronuserland/builder:wine

  2. Type in yarn && yarn dist

If you don’t have dist npm script in your package.json, call ./node_modules/.bin/electron-builder directly.

Or to avoid second step, append to first command /bin/bash -c "yarn && yarn dist" You can use /test.sh to install dependencies and run tests.

Tip

If you don’t need to build Windows, use image electronuserland/builder (wine is not installed in this image).

Provided Docker Images

  • electronuserland/builder or electronuserland/builder:18 — NodeJS 18 and required system dependencies. Based on builder:base. Use this image if you need to build only Linux targets.
  • electronuserland/builder:wine — Wine, NodeJS 18 and required system dependencies. Based on builder:18. Use this image if you need to build Windows targets.
  • electronuserland/builder:wine-mono — Mono for Squirrel.Windows. Based on builder:wine. Use this image if you need to build Squirrel.Windows target.
  • electronuserland/builder:wine-chrome — google-chrome-stable and xvfb are available — you can use this image for headless testing of Electron application. Based on builder:wine.
  • electronuserland/builder:base — Required system dependencies. Not supposed to be used directly. There are also iterations of these docker images for Node 16 (builder:16, builder:16-wine, etc.) and Node 16 (builder:14, builder:14-wine, etc.) Docker images are also tagged with the Date suffix -%m.%y to statically reference an image, ex: builder:18-07.23. Full docker build, node version, and tag script can be found here: build.sh