bootstrap-electron-meteor

A template for simplifying the process of creating desktop apps with Electron and Meteor.

History

This project is inspired from ElectroMeteor, and more or less just a modified version of that particular setup. This solution takes another approach though, when it comes to building and packaging the app. It uses electron-packager and electron-builder to perform those tasks. This makes it possible to build for all platforms on one machine, even the well known and special Windows creature. Windows and OS X installers can also easily be created, if specified while building.

Prerequisites

Some dependencies you have to install.

Meteor.js and Node.js

Install Meteor and Node. It's recommended to use Node version > 0.12.0 for building and packaging the Electron app.

# Install Meteor
$

# install Node
$

Development

Not much is required to set it up for development, you should be up and running in no time. Let's go through the steps.

Setup

First off, after installing the dependencies mentioned in the prerequisites section, you have to install the Node dependencies of the project:

# Install the node dependencies
$ npm install

PS: You may have to use the sudo command if it fails with error.

Next, run the setup script available in the scripts folder, which will download the correct Electron version for you.

# Install Electron
$ node scripts/setup

Run tha' damn thingy

It's quite easy, just do:

# Run ElectronMeteor! Run!
$ node scripts/run

Building and Packaging

This is the critical part, and you may acounter some problems. We all do when it comes to building, and specially with our delicious friend (you know whom), combined with Node's longest paths). Be patient! You can do it! We will cheer you all the way until you make the goal line.

Only build

Be aware: All npm scripts shall be run from the root directory.

Build for all platforms and archs:
```
# Build all
$ npm run build
```

Build for a specific platform with/without specific arch:

# Build only for Windows
$ npm run build:win

# Build for Windows with x64
$ npm run build:win:x64

Build and pack it up for dist

This follows the same pattern as for builds. Just substitute build with pack.

Pack and build for all platforms and archs:
```
# Build all
$ npm run build
```

Pack and build for a specific platform with/without specific arch:

# Build only for OS X
$ npm run pack:osx

# Build for OS X with arch x64
$ npm run pack:osx:x64

The platforms and archs available

Windows as win
- ia32
- x64 (not tested yet)
OS X (darwin) as osx
- x64
Linux as linux
- x64
- ia32 (not tested yet)

Travis

A travis file is included for a typical setup. Just paste in your Github API code under the deployment section.

Configuration

You may want to substitue ElectronMeteor with your app's name in packager.json, package.json and ìndex.js. Futher, all Meteor related code should be inside the meteor directory. If you want to use npm modules on the client, just add them in package.json under the dependencies section. The require thingy is available on the client, so you can do something like:

var fs = require('fs');
...

On the server use Npm.require as in a normal Meteor app.

bompi88 / bootstrap-electron-meteor