GitHub action for electron-builder

Easy, cleaned and updated action for building, compiling and releasing Electron applications

This is a GitHub Action for building and compiling Electron applications with GitHub CI/CD. It uses electron-builder to compile and package the appication and optionally release it to a platform of your choice.

This action is an updated, refactored and cleaned up version of samuelmeuli/action-electron-builder. The action hasn't gotten any updates in over 2 years and it was missing some basic features such as PNPM support. Basically a no nonsense action for Electron.

Setup

1. Configure your application and electron-builder.

2. Configure your workflow script. Either run build before we package electron or we run build default before packaging. You can configure this.

3. Add a workflow file to your project (e.g. .github/workflows/build.yml):

   name: Build/release
   
   on: push
   
   jobs:
       release:
           runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
   
           strategy:
               matrix:
                   os: [macos-latest, ubuntu-latest, windows-latest]
   
           steps:
               - name: Check out Git repository
                 uses: actions/checkout@v1
   
               - name: Install Node.js, NPM and Yarn
                 uses: actions/setup-node@v1
                 with:
                     node-version: 16
   
               - name: Compile Electron App
                 uses: x6Pnda/action-electron-compiler@v1
                 with:
                     # GitHub token, automatically provided to the action
                     # (Optional)
                     github_token: ${{ secrets.github_token }}
   
                     # If the commit is tagged with a version (e.g. "v1.0.0"),
                     # (Optional)
                     release: ${{ startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/tags/v') }}
   
                     # Package manager. NPM, PNPM and Yarn supported. Install Yarn and PNPM yourself. Default is NPM
                     # (Optional)
                     package_manager: NPM
   
                     # Skip buiding the application
                     # (Optional)
                     skip_build: false

There are more options located in the action.yml file. Good luck.

Usage

Building

Using this the workflow above, GitHub will build your app every time you push a commit.

Releasing

When you want to create a new release, follow these steps:

1. Update the version in your project's package.json file (e.g. 1.2.3)
2. Commit that change (git commit -am v1.2.3)
3. Tag your commit (git tag v1.2.3). Make sure your tag name's format is v*.*.*. Your workflow will use this tag to detect when to create a release
4. Push your changes to GitHub (git push && git push --tags)

After building successfully, the action will publish your release artifacts. By default, a new release draft will be created on GitHub with download links for your app. If you want to change this behavior, have a look at the electron-builder docs.

Configuration

Notarization

Use your aftersign script. Make your life easy and copy paste it from @electron/notarize. You can use the environment variables APPLE_ID and APPLE_ID_PASSWORD to get the variables set inside the action. Will look into Windows at a later time. The point of this action is to compile, not to notarize. Don't create unicorns...

Development

Create an issue or suggestion. Before submitting: don't overcomplicate things. Think is it really needed or something which makes it harder for other users.