Fable samples for Github Electron apps

This repository contains samples to show how to create a Github Electron cross-platform desktop app using F# and Fable.

At the time of writing there's only one simple sample. More to come!

Requirements

• dotnet SDK 2.0 or higher
• node.js 6.11 or higher
• A JS package manager: yarn or npm

npm comes bundled with node.js, but we recommend to use at least npm 5. If you have npm installed, you can upgrade it by running npm install -g npm.

Although is not a Fable requirement, on macOS and Linux you'll need Mono for other F# tooling like Paket or editor support.

Editor

The project can be used by editors compatible with the new .fsproj format, like VS Code + Ionide, Emacs with fsharp-mode or Rider. Visual Studio for Mac is also compatible but in the current version the package auto-restore function conflicts with Paket so you need to disable it: Preferences > Nuget > General.

Building and running the app

In the commands below, yarn is the tool of choice. If you want to use npm, just replace yarn by npm in the commands.

• Install JS dependencies: yarn install
• Install F# dependencies: dotnet restore
• Start Fable daemon and Webpack: yarn start
• In another terminal, run: yarn run launch

The first two steps are only necessary the first time or whenever the dependencies change.

The app window will be refreshed when you modify any file in the Renderer project. For production, run yarn run build to get optimized JS code.

Releasing the app

In the commands below, yarn is the tool of choice. If you want to use npm, just replace yarn by npm in the commands.

• Run yarn run build
• Run yarn run release
• A release folder should be created with a ready to execute application

This will package the electron app for your current platform. This means if you are under Mac this will create a Simple Fable App.app application that can be executed.

If you want to specify which platform to release, please take a look at electron-packager. For example, to release to Linux you could do this:

• Add a new release-linux script to the package.json file like this:
      "release-linux": "electron-packager . --arch=x64 --platform=linux --out release --overwrite"
• Run yarn run release-linux
• Or you could run electron-packager from the command line by first installing npx: npm install -g npx
• Try to run npx from your repo folder by typing npx -v
• If npx is not found, restart Windows to update the Path environment variable to include ..\AppData\Roaming\npm.
• Run npx electron-packager . --arch=x64 --platform=linux --out release --overwrite
• When you try to execute the Simple Fable App file on an Ubuntu instance, if it fails to run you might need to sudo apt-get install libnss3.

Architecture

As all Electron apps, the sample is split in two parts:

1. The main process, responsible to create the app windows.
2. The renderer process, responsible to generate the code used by index.html.

Samples

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