Electron Rebuild
This executable rebuilds native Node.js modules against the version of Node.js that your Electron project is using. This allows you to use native Node.js modules in Electron apps without your system version of Node.js matching exactly (which is often not the case, and sometimes not even possible).
How does it work?
Install the package with --save-dev
:
npm install --save-dev electron-rebuild
Then, whenever you install a new npm package, rerun electron-rebuild:
$(npm bin)/electron-rebuild
Or if you're on Windows:
.\node_modules\.bin\electron-rebuild.cmd
If you have a good node-gyp config but you see an error about a missing element on Windows like Could not load the Visual C++ component "VCBuild.exe"
, try to launch electron-rebuild in an npm script:
"scripts": {
"rebuild": "electron-rebuild -f -w yourmodule"
}
and then
npm run rebuild
CLI Arguments
Usage: electron-rebuild --version [version] --module-dir [path]
Options:
-h, --help Show help [boolean]
-v, --version The version of Electron to build against
-f, --force Force rebuilding modules, even if we would skip
it otherwise
-a, --arch Override the target architecture to something
other than your system's
-m, --module-dir The path to the app directory to rebuild
-w, --which-module A specific module to build, or comma separated
list of modules
-e, --electron-prebuilt-dir The path to electron-prebuilt
-d, --dist-url Custom header tarball URL
-t, --types The types of dependencies to rebuild. Comma
seperated list of "prod", "dev" and "optional".
Default is "prod,optional"
-p, --parallel Rebuild in parallel, this is enabled by default
on macOS and Linux
-s, --sequential Rebuild modules sequentially, this is enabled by
default on Windows
Copyright 2016
Electron Forge?
How can I use this withThis package is automatically used with Electron Forge when packaging an Electron app.
Electron Packager?
How can I integrate this intoelectron-rebuild provides a function compatible with the afterCopy
hook
for Electron Packager. For example:
import packager from 'electron-packager';
import rebuild from 'electron-rebuild';
packager({
// … other options
afterCopy: [(buildPath, electronVersion, platform, arch, callback) => {
rebuild(buildPath, electronVersion, arch)
.then(() => callback())
.catch((error) => callback(error));
}],
// … other options
});
How can I integrate this into Grunt / Gulp / Whatever?
electron-rebuild is also a library that you can just require into your app or build process. It has a very simple API:
import rebuild from 'electron-rebuild';
// Public: Rebuilds a node_modules directory with the given Electron version.
//
// appPath - An absolute path to your app's directory. (The directory that contains your node_modules)
// electronVersion - The version of Electron to rebuild for
// arch (optional) - Default: process.arch - The arch to rebuild for
// extraModules (optional) - Default: [] - An array of modules to rebuild as well as the detected modules
// forceRebuild (optional) - Default: false - Force a rebuild of modules regardless of their current build state
// headerURL (optional) - Default: atom.io/download/electron - The URL to download Electron header files from
// types (optional) - Default: ['prod', 'optional'] - The types of modules to rebuild
// mode (optional) - The rebuild mode, either 'sequential' or 'parallel' - Default varies per platform (probably shouldn't mess with this one)
// Returns a Promise indicating whether the operation succeeded or not
A full build process might look something like:
let childProcess = require('child_process');
let pathToElectron = require('electron-prebuilt');
rebuild(__dirname, '1.4.12')
.then(() => console.info('Rebuild Successful'))
.catch((e) => {
console.error("Building modules didn't work!");
console.error(e);
});
Alternatives
- require-rebuild patches
require()
to rebuild native node modules on the fly