251 lines
9 KiB
Markdown
251 lines
9 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
title: 'Publishing and Updating'
|
|
description: "There are several ways to update an Electron application. The easiest and officially supported one is taking advantage of the built-in Squirrel framework and Electron's autoUpdater module."
|
|
slug: tutorial-publishing-updating
|
|
hide_title: false
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
:::info Follow along the tutorial
|
|
|
|
This is **part 6** of the Electron tutorial.
|
|
|
|
1. [Prerequisites][prerequisites]
|
|
1. [Building your First App][building your first app]
|
|
1. [Using Preload Scripts][preload]
|
|
1. [Adding Features][features]
|
|
1. [Packaging Your Application][packaging]
|
|
1. **[Publishing and Updating][updates]**
|
|
|
|
:::
|
|
|
|
## Learning goals
|
|
|
|
If you've been following along, this is the last step of the tutorial! In this part,
|
|
you will publish your app to GitHub releases and integrate automatic updates
|
|
into your app code.
|
|
|
|
## Using update.electronjs.org
|
|
|
|
The Electron maintainers provide a free auto-updating service for open-source apps
|
|
at https://update.electronjs.org. Its requirements are:
|
|
|
|
- Your app runs on macOS or Windows
|
|
- Your app has a public GitHub repository
|
|
- Builds are published to [GitHub releases]
|
|
- Builds are [code signed][code-signed]
|
|
|
|
At this point, we'll assume that you have already pushed all your
|
|
code to a public GitHub repository.
|
|
|
|
:::info Alternative update services
|
|
|
|
If you're using an alternate repository host (e.g. GitLab or Bitbucket) or if
|
|
you need to keep your code repository private, please refer to our
|
|
[step-by-step guide][update-server] on hosting your own Electron update server.
|
|
|
|
:::
|
|
|
|
## Publishing a GitHub release
|
|
|
|
Electron Forge has [Publisher] plugins that can automate the distribution
|
|
of your packaged application to various sources. In this tutorial, we will
|
|
be using the GitHub Publisher, which will allow us to publish
|
|
our code to GitHub releases.
|
|
|
|
### Generating a personal access token
|
|
|
|
Forge cannot publish to any repository on GitHub without permission. You
|
|
need to pass in an authenticated token that gives Forge access to
|
|
your GitHub releases. The easiest way to do this is to
|
|
[create a new personal access token (PAT)][new-pat]
|
|
with the `public_repo` scope, which gives write access to your public repositories.
|
|
**Make sure to keep this token a secret.**
|
|
|
|
### Setting up the GitHub Publisher
|
|
|
|
#### Installing the module
|
|
|
|
Forge's [GitHub Publisher] is a plugin that
|
|
needs to be installed in your project's `devDependencies`:
|
|
|
|
```sh npm2yarn
|
|
npm install --save-dev @electron-forge/publisher-github
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
#### Configuring the publisher in Forge
|
|
|
|
Once you have it installed, you need to set it up in your Forge
|
|
configuration. A full list of options is documented in the Forge's
|
|
[`PublisherGitHubConfig`] API docs.
|
|
|
|
```json title='package.json' {6-16}
|
|
{
|
|
//...
|
|
"config": {
|
|
"forge": {
|
|
"publishers": [
|
|
{
|
|
"name": "@electron-forge/publisher-github",
|
|
"config": {
|
|
"repository": {
|
|
"owner": "github-user-name",
|
|
"name": "github-repo-name"
|
|
},
|
|
"prerelease": false,
|
|
"draft": true
|
|
}
|
|
}
|
|
]
|
|
}
|
|
}
|
|
//...
|
|
}
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
:::tip Drafting releases before publishing
|
|
|
|
Notice that you have configured Forge to publish your release as a draft.
|
|
This will allow you to see the release with its generated artifacts
|
|
without actually publishing it to your end users. You can manually
|
|
publish your releases via GitHub after writing release notes and
|
|
double-checking that your distributables work.
|
|
|
|
:::
|
|
|
|
#### Setting up your authentication token
|
|
|
|
You also need to make the Publisher aware of your authentication token.
|
|
By default, it will use the value stored in the `GITHUB_TOKEN` environment
|
|
variable.
|
|
|
|
### Running the publish command
|
|
|
|
Add Forge's [publish command] to your npm scripts.
|
|
|
|
```json {6} title='package.json'
|
|
//...
|
|
"scripts": {
|
|
"start": "electron-forge start",
|
|
"package": "electron-forge package",
|
|
"make": "electron-forge make",
|
|
"publish": "electron-forge publish"
|
|
},
|
|
//...
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
This command will run your configured makers and publish the output distributables to a new
|
|
GitHub release.
|
|
|
|
```sh npm2yarn
|
|
npm run publish
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
By default, this will only publish a single distributable for your host operating system and
|
|
architecture. You can publish for different architectures by passing in the `--arch` flag to your
|
|
Forge commands.
|
|
|
|
The name of this release will correspond to the `version` field in your project's package.json file.
|
|
|
|
:::tip Tagging releases
|
|
|
|
Optionally, you can also [tag your releases in Git][git-tag] so that your
|
|
release is associated with a labeled point in your code history. npm comes
|
|
with a handy [`npm version`](https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v8/commands/npm-version)
|
|
command that can handle the version bumping and tagging for you.
|
|
|
|
:::
|
|
|
|
#### Bonus: Publishing in GitHub Actions
|
|
|
|
Publishing locally can be painful, especially because you can only create distributables
|
|
for your host operating system (i.e. you can't publish a Window `.exe` file from macOS).
|
|
|
|
A solution for this would be to publish your app via automation workflows
|
|
such as [GitHub Actions], which can run tasks in the
|
|
cloud on Ubuntu, macOS, and Windows. This is the exact approach taken by [Electron Fiddle].
|
|
You can refer to Fiddle's [Build and Release pipeline][fiddle-build]
|
|
and [Forge configuration][fiddle-forge-config]
|
|
for more details.
|
|
|
|
## Instrumenting your updater code
|
|
|
|
Now that we have a functional release system via GitHub releases, we now need to tell our
|
|
Electron app to download an update whenever a new release is out. Electron apps do this
|
|
via the [autoUpdater] module, which reads from an update server feed to check if a new version
|
|
is available for download.
|
|
|
|
The update.electronjs.org service provides an updater-compatible feed. For example, Electron
|
|
Fiddle v0.28.0 will check the endpoint at https://update.electronjs.org/electron/fiddle/darwin/v0.28.0
|
|
to see if a newer GitHub release is available.
|
|
|
|
After your release is published to GitHub, the update.electronjs.org service should work
|
|
for your application. The only step left is to configure the feed with the autoUpdater module.
|
|
|
|
To make this process easier, the Electron team maintains the [`update-electron-app`] module,
|
|
which sets up the autoUpdater boilerplate for update.electronjs.org in one function
|
|
call — no configuration required. This module will search for the update.electronjs.org
|
|
feed that matches your project's package.json `"repository"` field.
|
|
|
|
First, install the module as a runtime dependency.
|
|
|
|
```sh npm2yarn
|
|
npm install update-electron-app
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Then, import the module and call it immediately in the main process.
|
|
|
|
```js title='main.js'
|
|
require('update-electron-app')()
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
And that is all it takes! Once your application is packaged, it will update itself for each new
|
|
GitHub release that you publish.
|
|
|
|
## Summary
|
|
|
|
In this tutorial, we configured Electron Forge's GitHub Publisher to upload your app's
|
|
distributables to GitHub releases. Since distributables cannot always be generated
|
|
between platforms, we recommend setting up your building and publishing flow
|
|
in a Continuous Integration pipeline if you do not have access to machines.
|
|
|
|
Electron applications can self-update by pointing the autoUpdater module to an update server feed.
|
|
update.electronjs.org is a free update server provided by Electron for open-source applications
|
|
published on GitHub releases. Configuring your Electron app to use this service is as easy as
|
|
installing and importing the `update-electron-app` module.
|
|
|
|
If your application is not eligible for update.electronjs.org, you should instead deploy your
|
|
own update server and configure the autoUpdater module yourself.
|
|
|
|
:::info 🌟 You're done!
|
|
|
|
From here, you have officially completed our tutorial to Electron. Feel free to explore the
|
|
rest of our docs and happy developing! If you have questions, please stop by our community
|
|
[Discord server].
|
|
|
|
:::
|
|
|
|
[autoupdater]: ../api/auto-updater.md
|
|
[code-signed]: ./code-signing.md
|
|
[discord server]: https://discord.gg/electronjs
|
|
[electron fiddle]: https://electronjs.org/fiddle
|
|
[fiddle-build]: https://github.com/electron/fiddle/blob/master/.github/workflows/build.yaml
|
|
[fiddle-forge-config]: https://github.com/electron/fiddle/blob/master/forge.config.js
|
|
[github actions]: https://github.com/features/actions
|
|
[github publisher]: https://www.electronforge.io/config/publishers/github
|
|
[github releases]: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/releasing-projects-on-github/managing-releases-in-a-repository
|
|
[git tag]: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Basics-Tagging
|
|
[new-pat]: https://github.com/settings/tokens/new
|
|
[publish command]: https://www.electronforge.io/cli#publish
|
|
[publisher]: https://www.electronforge.io/config/publishers
|
|
[`publishergithubconfig`]: https://js.electronforge.io/publisher/github/interfaces/publishergithubconfig
|
|
[`update-electron-app`]: https://github.com/electron/update-electron-app
|
|
[update-server]: ./updates.md
|
|
|
|
<!-- Tutorial links -->
|
|
|
|
[prerequisites]: tutorial-1-prerequisites.md
|
|
[building your first app]: tutorial-2-first-app.md
|
|
[preload]: tutorial-3-preload.md
|
|
[features]: tutorial-4-adding-features.md
|
|
[packaging]: tutorial-5-packaging.md
|
|
[updates]: tutorial-6-publishing-updating.md
|