Bundle a precompiled binary or native file into an electron app.

2 min readJan 26, 2019

Author: Ganesh Rathinavel
License: MIT
Repo URL: https://github.com/ganeshrvel/tutorial-electron-bundle-binaries
Contacts: ganeshrvel@outlook.com

Introduction

Distributing pre-compiled native binaries along with an electron application could get tricky as the ASAR packager tends to exclude such files while packaging the app. This was originally implemented inside OpenMTP — Advanced Android File Transfer Application for macOS.

Implementation

Create the “OS” folder inside the project’s “build” directory

# Replace {OS} with the required OS name. eg: mac, win, linux
$ mkdir -p ./build/{OS}/bin

Place the binaries here
Install npm packages

$ npm install electron-root-pathor$ yarn add electron-root-path

Create the file ./app/binaries.js and paste the code:

'use strict';import path from 'path';
import { remote } from 'electron';
import { rootPath } from 'electron-root-path';
import getPlatform from './get-platform';const IS_PROD = process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production';
const root = rootPath;
const { getAppPath } = remote.app;
const isPackaged =
  process.mainModule.filename.indexOf('app.asar') !== -1;const binariesPath =
  IS_PROD && isPackaged
    ? path.join(path.dirname(getAppPath()), '..', './Resources', './bin')
    : path.join(root, './resources', getPlatform(), './bin');export const execPath = path.resolve(path.join(binariesPath, './binary-file'));

Create the file ./app/get-platform.js and paste the code

'use strict';import { platform } from 'os';export default () => {
  switch (platform()) {
    case 'aix':
    case 'freebsd':
    case 'linux':
    case 'openbsd':
    case 'android':
      return 'linux';
    case 'darwin':
    case 'sunos':
      return 'mac';
    case 'win32':
      return 'win';
  }
};

Add the below code to your ./package.json file

"build": {
 "extraFiles": [
      {
        "from": "build/mac/bin",
        "to": "Resources/bin",
        "filter": [
          "**/*"
        ]
      }
    ],
},

To distribute the code via Mac App Store, add the below code to your package.json file

"build": {
	"mas": {
      "type": "distribution",
      "category": "public.app-category.productivity",
      "entitlements": "build/entitlements.mas.plist",
      "icon": "build/icon.icns",
      "binaries": [
        "dist/mas/<APP_NAME>.app/Contents/Resources/bin/mtp-cli"
      ]
    },
}

Import the binary file as:

import { execPath } from './binaries';// your program code:
var command = spawn(execPath, arg, {});

More repos

License

tutorial-electron-bundle-binaries is released under MIT License.

Bundle a precompiled binary or native file into an electron app.

Introduction

Implementation

More repos

License

Written by Ganesh Rathinavel