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Build and Publish a Multi-Platform Electron App on GitHub

Erik Hofer on December 31, 2020

Introduction Create Electron Application Build on Linux, Windows and macOS Publish Release to GitHub Draft Releases Outlook Introductio...

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Greggman • Mar 28 '22 • Edited

If I understand correctly you probably want to change npm install to npm ci. npm install will use the latest compatible dependencies where as npm ci will use what's in package-lock.json.

Erik Hofer • Apr 15 '22

Yeah, that is a good hint! :)

Andy Bulka • Apr 17 '21

Thanks for a great article. You have a typo in the use of 'draft' - which needs to be outside the repository json config, not inside it. It should look like:

"publishers": [
  {
    "name": "@electron-forge/publisher-github",
    "config": {
      "repository": {
        "owner": "erikhofer",
        "name": "hello-electron"
      },
    "draft": true
    }
  }
]

Also, as you are no doubt aware, there is a shorthand way of specifying jobs for all operating systems, which means a much shorter yml workflow file and no duplication of lines needed.

jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}

    strategy:
      matrix:
        os: [macos-latest, ubuntu-latest, windows-latest]

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2       
    - uses: actions/setup-node@master
      with:
        node-version: 14
    - name: install dependencies
      run: npm install
    - name: publish
      env:
        GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
      run: npm run publish

Hoping you write some follow up articles about auto-updating and code signing!

Erik Hofer • Apr 29 '21

Ah thanks, fixed the draft typo.

I've seen the matrix build before but it didn't come to mind at the time. Thanks for the addition, it's much more concise!

Abhishek Chakravarty • Oct 26 '21

Hi @erikhofer thanks for the article. One thing I want to know: Can this be done with private repo?

Erik Hofer • Nov 3 '21

Thanks! I haven't tried it yet but I think yes.
If you need to use a special authToken, this can be configured: js.electronforge.io/publisher/gith...
Also note that GitHub Actions has an execution time quota for private repos, see github.com/pricing

Ashish Srivastava • Dec 2 '21 • Edited

I am trying this on a private repo. All the steps run fine including the Release step, but I dont see any other files in assets (I mean an executable for the electron app after publishing) . See attached image.

Thanh Minh • Mar 31 '21

Thanksss. It help me lots

Mak • Feb 2 '21

Great article. How long did it take before the executables were added to your release?

Erik Hofer • Mar 9 '21

Thanks! It mainly depends on the build time of the application, in the example it's about 3 minutes.

cezer • Mar 25

Is it normal to be asked my npm credentials when I run electron-forge publish? Curious as I didn't expect my app to be published to npm and publicly too.