How To Publish an Electron App to Github at Build Time

In the page, I’ll introduce a method to build an electron app and automatically publish it to GitHub using electron-builder.

First, you should install electron-builder:

npm install --save-dev electron-builder

Then, you should add repository and build option in package.json as below:

// package.json
{
    "name": "{ name }",
    "version": "{ version }",
    ...
    "repository": {
        "type": "git",
        "url": "{ repository url }"
    },
    "build": {
        "appID": "{ appID }",
        ...
        "publish": {
            "provider": "github",
            "host": "{ github.com }",
            "owner": "{ github username }",
            "repo": "{ repository name }",
            "releaseType": "draft",
        },
        "releaseInfo": {
            "releaseNotesFile": "release-notes.md",
        }
    }
}

releaseType can be “draft”, “prerelease”, or “release”; and these are types of release. If you choose “draft”, you have to publish release manually in the remote repository.

releaseInfo contains “releaseName”, “releaseNotes”, “releaseNotesFile”, “releaseDate” values that summarize the release update.

Electron-builder with Vue

When you use electron with Vue, you should configure builder in vue.config.js as below:

module.exports = defineConfig({
    ...
    pluginOptions: {
        electronBuilder: {
            builderOptions: {
                appId: "{ appID }",
                ...
                "publish": {
                    "provider": "github",
                    "host": "{ github.com }",
                    "owner": "{ github username }",
                    "repo": "{ repository name }",
                    "releaseType": "draft",
                },
                "releaseInfo": {
                    "releaseNotesFile": "release-notes.md",
                }
            }
        }
    },
    ...
})

Publish

To publish a release, execute the below line using publish argument, -p or --publish:

vue-cli-service electron:build --publish always

always forces to publish the current build. The choices are “onTag”, “onTagOrDraft”, “always”, and “never”. ¹

When you use NPM script, execute:

npm run [build script] -- -p always

-- makes to pass the following arguments to the script. Please make sure the GH_TOKEN environment variable is set.

1. https://www.electron.build/configuration/publish.html ↩