Electron Installer Grunt Plugin

Grunt plugin that builds Windows installers for Electron apps using Squirrel.

Installing

npm install --save-dev grunt-electron-installer

Configuring

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

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-electron-installer')

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

'create-windows-installer': {
  x64: {
    appDirectory: '/tmp/build/my-app-64',
    outputDirectory: '/tmp/build/installer64',
    authors: 'My App Inc.',
    exe: 'myapp.exe'
  },
  ia32: {
    appDirectory: '/tmp/build/my-app-32',
    outputDirectory: '/tmp/build/installer32',
    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 for each multi task target given under the config entry.

There are several configuration settings supported:

Config Name	Required	Description
appDirectory	Yes	The folder path of your Electron 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.
iconUrl	No	A URL to an ICO file to use as the application icon (displayed in Control Panel > Programs and Features). Defaults to the Atom icon.
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.

Handling Squirrel Events

Squirrel will spawn your app with command line flags on first run, updates, and uninstalls. it is very important that your app handle these events as early as possible, and quit immediately after handling them. Squirrel will give your app a short amount of time (~15sec) to apply these operations and quit.

You should handle these events in your app's main entry point with something such as:

var app = require('app');

var handleStartupEvent = function() {
  if (process.platform !== 'win32') {
    return false;
  }

  var squirrelCommand = process.argv[1];
  switch (squirrelCommand) {
    case '--squirrel-install':
    case '--squirrel-updated':

      // Optionally do things such as:
      //
      // - Install desktop and start menu shortcuts
      // - Add your .exe to the PATH
      // - Write to the registry for things like file associations and
      //   explorer context menus

      // Always quit when done
      app.quit();

      return true;
    case '--squirrel-uninstall':
      // Undo anything you did in the --squirrel-install and
      // --squirrel-updated handlers

      // Always quit when done
      app.quit();

      return true;
    case '--squirrel-obsolete':
      // This is called on the outgoing version of your app before
      // we update to the new version - it's the opposite of
      // --squirrel-updated
      app.quit();
      return true;
  }
};

if (handleStartupEvent()) {
  return;
}