Build Electron App For Windows On Mac
Create Electron applications with Visual Studio Code 31 October 2015 Posted in,, Visual Studio Code (VSCode) is by far my favourite editor. I've got nothing against Sublime or Atom, but the first one is not free and the second one tends to get a bit slow. I use all 3, in case you think of accusing me of favouritism, but my Go-To editor is VSCode. One of its biggest strengths is obviously the debugging experience. This week I decided to start rewriting my password application (PasswordDefence) with Electron. This will mean that once finalized, I will have a mobile and desktop presence and it also gives me a good opportunity to play around with a couple of new frameworks. What is Electron?
Some fields already have rudimentary validation logic and create warnings e.g when mac is selected as target but the app category is missing. Based on the selected platforms the advanced tab will contain additonal target-specific settings for windows, mac or linux. The powerful electron-builder has countless settings and options.
Electron (formerly known as Atom) is a framework that runs on top of node.js and allows you to create beautiful desktop applications using web technologies. The HTML, CSS and JavaScript that you got to love over the years, can now be used to write some really solid and robust desktop application for the Mac and Windows ecosystems. GitHub and Slack are both apps written with Electron. On top of that, you can use Flux, React etc to enhance your application and get to your 'destination' faster. Environment Setup To work with Electron, you need to install it. Fire up a node command prompt and type the following: # Install the `electron` command globally in your $PATH npm install electron-prebuilt -g # Install as a development dependency # navigate to your project folder first npm install electron-prebuilt --save-dev With the binaries installed, we can start coding. I initially wrote my code in Atom.
Atom works fine and doesn't require any special setup. You do, however, have to use the the node console to launch the application by navigating to your app directory and typing electron.
Is there a similar app for imessage on mac. Setup VSCode to work with Electron Open your application folder in VSCode. Press Ctrl+Shift+B to build the project. Best to do list app for both platforms mac iphone 2018. This will prompt you to setup a tasks.json, which in effect tells VSCode what to do when you issue this command. Comment all the tasks out and add the following settings: The next time you issue a Ctrl+Shift+B command, you should get a nice build and have your application launched. Debugging Electron with VSCode VSCode takes the development experience one step further by allowing you to debug your code. Go to the debugger window and click on settings. This will prompt you to create a launch.json.
Accept it and open the file. Paste the following settings in it: Make sure you point to the right entry JavaScript file for your application, if it's different than mine. These 2 settings should be enough to get you started. After that, it's all fun working with the same tools and frameworks you already know to create really cool applications. Let me know in the comments if you have any problems with this setup. Make sure you follow me on Twitter for more up-to-date news, articles and tips.
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This seems like a good question to ask you guys here on dev.to I advertise to my clients and pretty much anyone who will listen that with the right configuration(s) Node/Electron applications can easily be built for Windows, Linux and MacOS with zero changes in the actual code. (provided that the application has no operating system specific dependencies and other duh objections) Building a Node application for all three platforms is pretty easy and I have done that a million times. Building my Electron app for Windows and Linux using the electron-builder is no rocket science either.
In theory they should also run on MacOS. However I have never actually built an Electron app for MacOS. Mostly this is because I do not own an Apple computer (think I have never physically touched one), it doesn't seem to be possible on Windows and there is no way in hell my laptop will run it virtually. The Black Eyed Peas asked if I can practice what I'm preachin' so I had a look online if I can maybe rent a VPS somewhere that runs MacOS, then figure out the rest using a form of remote desktop protocol. I did find some cloud solutions that offer MacOS VPS services but most of them are pricey and not worth the investment at this point. I just need a simple build server for compatibility testing and learning purposes, not because I need currently need it in the real world. Dear Apple developers, how would I go about doing that?