nwjs-builder-phoenix

nwjs-builder-phoenix

A possible solution to build and package a ready for distribution NW.js app for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Why Bother?

We already has official nw-builder and nwjs-builder, which was built as an alternative before nw-builder would support 0.13.x and later versions. nw-builder has made little progress on the way, and nwjs-builder has been hard to continue due to personal and historic reasons.

electron-builder inspired me when I became an Electron user later, loose files excluding, various target formats, auto updater, artifacts publishing and code signing, amazing!

Although NW.js has much lesser popularity than Electron, and is really troubled by historic headaches, let's have something modern.

Installation

npm install nwjs-builder-phoenix --save-dev

By installing it locally, build and run commands will be available in npm scripts. You can access help information via ./node_modules/.bin/{ build, run } --help. Do NOT install it globally, as the command names are just too common.

Add the following to package.json, and npm run build and npm run launch will work.

// package.json
{
    "scripts": {
        "build": "build --win --mac --linux --x86 --x64 --mirror https://dl.nwjs.io/ .",
        "launch": "run --x86 --mirror https://dl.nwjs.io/ ."
    }
}

Options

Passing and managing commandline arguments can be painful. In nwjs-builder-phoenix, we configure via the build property of the package.json in the project. Also you can specify external builder.json file (whatever filename) by appending --config builder.json to CLI arguments.

See all available Options.

Examples

• ./assets/project/

Differences to nwjs-builder

• nwjs-builder-phoenix queries versions.json only when a symbol like lts, stable or latest is used to specify a version.
• nwjs-builder-phoenix uses rcedit instead of node-resourcehacker, thus it's up to you to create proper .ico files with different sizes.
• nwjs-builder-phoenix supports node.js 4.x and later versions only.
• nwjs-builder-phoenix writes with TypeScript and benefits from strong typing and async/await functions.

Known Mirrors

If you have difficulties connecting to the official download source, you can specify a mirror via --mirror argument of both build and run, or by setting NWJS_MIRROR environment variable. Environment variables like HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY and ALL_PROXY should be useful too.

• China Mainland
  • https://npm.taobao.org/mirrors/nwjs/
• Singapore
  • https://cnpmjs.org/mirrors/nwjs/

License

MIT.