electron-builder

electron-builder is the de-facto tool for turning an Electron (or Proton Native) project into signed, distributable desktop installers across macOS, Windows, and Linux. Driven by a single configuration block and a electron-builder CLI command, it handles packaging, code signing, artifact publishing, and auto-update wiring without forcing you to manage the underlying platform tooling.

It downloads whatever native build tools it needs on demand, supports an enormous range of target formats (NSIS, MSI, AppX, dmg, pkg, AppImage, snap, deb, rpm, and more), and ships a matching electron-updater runtime so packaged apps can update themselves from GitHub Releases, S3, and other providers.

What You Get

• A single electron-builder CLI plus a programmatic build() API for packaging apps from scripts or CI
• Dozens of target formats across macOS (dmg, pkg, mas), Windows (NSIS, nsis-web, portable, AppX, MSI, Squirrel), and Linux (AppImage, snap, deb, rpm, pacman, and more)
• Built-in code signing and notarization on CI or a developer machine, with tools downloaded automatically on demand
• Auto-update-ready packaging paired with the companion electron-updater runtime and publishing to GitHub Releases, Amazon S3, and DigitalOcean Spaces
• Native dependency handling via install-app-deps, asar archiving, and Docker images for cross-platform builds

Common Use Cases

• Producing signed macOS, Windows, and Linux installers for an Electron desktop app in one CI pipeline
• Wiring up in-app auto-updates that pull new releases from GitHub or an S3-compatible bucket
• Cross-compiling Linux and Windows targets from any host using the provided Docker images

Under The Hood

Architecture electron-builder is a pnpm monorepo layered around a thin CLI and a heavy core. The published electron-builder package exposes cli/cli.ts, which uses yargs to route build, install-app-deps, publish, create-self-signed-cert, and migrate-schema commands, plus a programmatic build()/Platform API in builder.ts and index.ts. The real work lives in app-builder-lib, whose packager.ts orchestrates per-platform packagers (macPackager.ts, winPackager.ts, linuxPackager.ts) that extend a shared platformPackager.ts, each dispatching to concrete formats under targets/. Supporting concerns are cleanly separated into codeSign/, asar/, publish/, and node-module-collector/, while electron-publish and electron-updater are sibling packages handling artifact upload and the in-app update runtime.

Tech Stack The codebase is TypeScript (~95% of source) targeting native ESM on Node >=22.12, built with tsc --build across project references. It leans on the official @electron/* toolchain (@electron/asar, @electron/notarize, @electron/osx-sign, @electron/universal, @electron/rebuild, @electron/get) for platform primitives, ajv to validate configuration against a generated JSON schema, yargs for the CLI, and utilities like tar, undici, js-yaml, plist, semver, and fs-extra. Docker images are provided for reproducible cross-platform Linux/Windows builds.

Code Quality The project is heavily tested, with roughly 190 test files under test/src covering archiving, code signing, publishing, blockmaps, and full end-to-end build scenarios, run via a sharded Vitest harness. It enforces quality through a pretest gate that runs dependency checks, ESLint, and full TypeScript typechecking of both source and tests, plus Prettier formatting and Changesets-driven versioning. The strict TS configuration and modular package boundaries keep the large surface area maintainable.

API Design Ergonomics favor convention over configuration: a single declarative build block plus electron-builder produces signed, distributable artifacts, and required native tooling is downloaded automatically rather than pre-installed. The CLI mirrors a well-typed programmatic API (build({ targets, config })), configuration is JSON-schema-validated with a migrate-schema command to ease major upgrades, and extensive documentation on electron.build lowers the barrier despite the inherently complex cross-platform packaging domain.