nwjs-builder-phoenix/docs/FAQs.md

FAQs

Why do you set package.json:build.packed to false by default?

NW.js is not Electron. Using a zip file in NW.js, no matter as a separated .nw or combined with the executable, will require unzipping at every time the app launches, which results in a longer launch time, current working directory change and possibly slient crashes if unzipped path is longer than 255/260 characters.

If you want to reduce the amount of files, try using webpack or something like that to pack project sources and most of node modules into bundles. devDependencies are ignored automatically (so if a node module is packed into bundles, make it devDependencies).

Icons on Windows?

• Prepare different sizes (e.g. 32x32, 48x48, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256, etc.) of .pngs and use icotool or some other tools to create a proper .ico file.
• Set the path of .ico to package.json:build.win.icon.
• Set the path of a .png to package.json:window.icon.
• Save and build.

Windows Explorer might not reflect the changes immediately, if you have everything done and still see a default icon, check with something like Resource Hacker and restart Windows Explorer.

Building for NSIS target takes a long time, what can I do?

Please follow evshiron/nwjs-builder-phoenix#7, before that you can add --concurrent to enable concurrent building, which should reduce time when building for multiple platforms.

How can I use nwjs-builder-phoenix with Chrome Apps?

Simply add --chrome-app to the commandline arguments which enables support for Chrome Apps.

Also configurations should be set in manifest.json instead of package.json but within the same build property.

What's nsis target and what's the difference with nsis and nsis7z target?

nsis target will build NSIS installers (and updaters when package.json:build.nsis.diffUpdaters is true) for Windows.

nsis7z target will use 7za to compress and Nsis7z plug-in to extract, instead of the built-in LZMA compression, resulting in a better and faster compression. But it doesn't list installed files, onlya percentage indicating the progress of extraction when installing.