search

electron-archive / grunt-electron-installer

Grunt plugin to build Windows installers for Electron apps
MIT License
402 stars 106 forks source link

Question: is it recommended way to build installer? #88

Closed havenchyk closed 8 years ago

havenchyk commented 8 years ago

Hi, I'm still wondering, if grunt-electron-installer the recommended way to build installer?

kevinsawicki commented 8 years ago

It is a supported way, and I would recommend it if you are okay using grunt and like the configuration options it provided.

There is also https://www.npmjs.com/package/electron-installer-squirrel-windows which I've never used but looks to be a command line option that doesn't require grunt.

anaisbetts commented 8 years ago

grunt-electron-installer is the current supported way to create Electron Squirrel.Windows installers, it's what Slack and Atom both use, and it's the project that I update every release of Squirrel.Windows.

havenchyk commented 8 years ago

@kevinsawicki @paulcbetts that's great, but there is also electron-builder which many developers use. I'm ok with grunt and I would like to set up updates with squirrel as well, but it's not clear for me, is there any difference in build process between grunt-electron-installer and electron-builder. Also electron-builder allows to make builds for Mac.

I ask this question because I can't find in docs the "recommended" or "official" way.

Thanks for your answers and all your work!

anaisbetts commented 8 years ago

Yes, electron-builder uses NSIS, a completely different installation technology

havenchyk commented 8 years ago

@paulcbetts so, is it correct, that grunt-electron-installer creates exactly installers to use it with squirrel and not "interactive" installer like msi that provided by electron-builder?

anaisbetts commented 8 years ago

@havenchyk grunt-electron-installer will create a Setup.exe that you can give to users - if you want to see the experience of what a Squirrel-based installer does, install Atom or Open Live Writer

havenchyk commented 8 years ago

@kevinsawicki sorry for all the noise, but are you recommend to make a build on the same OS as a target? E.g. on windows for windows or it's not necessary?

kevinsawicki commented 8 years ago

on windows for windows or it's not necessary?

It should be possible to build Windows installers on Mac/Linux when mono and wine are installed. @paulcbetts would know more about it since he added support for that to squirrel.

Support for it was added to this plugin in #80

fasterthanlime commented 8 years ago

As far as I can tell:

Hoping to fix the latter soon though!

havenchyk commented 8 years ago

@paulcbetts could you please shed the light on this comment?

It should be possible to build Windows installers on Mac/Linux when mono and wine are installed. @paulcbetts would know more about it since he added support for that to squirrel. Support for it was added to this plugin in #80

anaisbetts commented 8 years ago

Support is there but it's got some bugs, we need to fix them up, @fasterthanlime has done some great work looking into it, but some of the caveats (No deltas, no MSI files) are a real drag.

anaisbetts commented 8 years ago

If y'all didn't know about it, AppVeyor is a great way to make Windows builds without having to deal with setting up Windows yourself, it's like a Windows version of Travis CI

havenchyk commented 8 years ago

@paulcbetts I just would like to find the way to make installers for mac and for windows with working auto-updating. Maybe anyone can share an example of sample where it's working. It would really great

havenchyk commented 8 years ago

So, electron-builder is a proper solution. After latest changes and merging with electron-complete-builder, it uses electron-winstaller under the hood (temp fork for now, but will be replaced soon).

I'd recommend to use electron-builder.