Automatic Cross-Platform Deployments with Electron on a Travis CI Server

This is a tutorial on how to setup an Electron app on , so that new versions are deployed to with a simple pull request. Travis CI Github Releases Boilerplate I created a o that has all the necessary configuration to deploy a minimalistic app to Github releases. If you get lost during the tutorial you can look to that as an example. Also, if you don't have an electron app yet and just want to start with it as an example feel free. boilerplate rep Electron Builder We need a package that will handle packing the app into an executable and deploying to Github releases. is a fantastic npm package that handles building, signing, notarizing, and deploying an electron app on all three operating systems. Add it using yarn ( ): Electron Builder recommended by Electron Builder electron- --dev yarn add builder Electron Builder uses your app's file for most configuration. package.json { : , : , : , : , : { : , : , : }, : , : [ , , , , ], : , : { : , : , : { : [ { : , : }, { : , : , : , : } ] }, : { : }, : { : , : } }, : { : , : } } "name" "{APP_NAME}" "version" "{VERSION_NUMBER}" "description" "A minimal Electron application that deploys on CI servers" "main" "main.js" "scripts" "start" "electron ." "release" "electron-builder" "test" "echo success" "repository" "https://github.com/{USER_NAME}/{REPO_NAME}" "keywords" "electron" "ci" "travis" "tutorial" "demo" "author" "{USER_NAME}" "build" "appId" "{APP_ID}" "publish" "github" "dmg" "contents" "x" 110 "y" 150 "x" 240 "y" 150 "type" "link" "path" "/Applications" "appImage" "license" "LICENSE" "nsis" "createDesktopShortcut" "always" "license" "LICENSE" "devDependencies" "electron" "^4.0.1" "electron-builder" "^21.2.0" Replace all the configuration variables with your own values. The configuration variables are all caps in {BRACKETS}. You should have a license file named LICENSE at the root of your directory, as well as a copy called in your build folder ( ). Electron builder uses those licenses as the license agreement for the installers. license_en.txt build/license_en.txt Good practice for an appId is a reverse domain name. For example, ours is . io.qvault.app You can setup your test script to actually run tests if you want, the above just prints "success" to the screen. We will configure Travis to run those tests on the CI server. At this point you should be able to run yarn release --publish never which will build and package your app locally into the directory. However, it will only build the package for your local operating system, which is expected. dist Travis CI Navigate to and sign up using your Github account. Once signed in you should be able to select which repository you want to connect to Travis. https://travis-ci.org/ Copy this code into at the root of your repository: .travis.yml : node_js language : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : node_js - '11.6.0' # Always run two parallel builds: one on mac and one on linux # the linux build will use wine to be able to build windows and # linux apps matrix include - os: osx osx_image xcode10.2 language node_js node_js "11.6.0" env - ELECTRON_CACHE=$HOME/.cache/electron - ELECTRON_BUILDER_CACHE=$HOME/.cache/electron-builder - os: linux dist trusty sudo required services docker language generic notifications email false # cache some files for faster builds cache yarn true directories - node_modules - $HOME/.cache/electron - $HOME/.cache/electron-builder # add git lfs for large file support before_install - | if [ "$TRAVIS_OS_NAME" == "osx" ]; then mkdir -p /tmp/git-lfs && curl -L https://github.com/github/git-lfs/releases/download/v2.3.1/git-lfs-$([ "$TRAVIS_OS_NAME" == "linux" ] && echo "linux" || echo "darwin")-amd64-2.3.1.tar.gz | tar -xz -C /tmp/git-lfs --strip-components 1 export PATH="/tmp/git-lfs:$PATH" fi before_script - git lfs pull # on PRs and merges to master and prod run tests and build the app script - | if [ "$TRAVIS_OS_NAME" == "linux" ]; then docker run --rm \ -v ${PWD}:/project \ -v ~/.cache/electron:/root/.cache/electron \ -v ~/.cache/electron-builder:/root/.cache/electron-builder \ electronuserland/builder:wine \ /bin/bash -c "yarn --link-duplicates --pure-lockfile && yarn test" else yarn test fi # only deploy to github on a merge to the prod branch deploy provider script script bash deploy.travis.sh skip_cleanup true on branch prod before_cache - rm -rf $HOME/.cache/electron-builder/wine # only run this script on pull requests and merges into # the 'master' and 'prod' branches branches only - master - prod The comments in the above file should explain what each step does, but the basic idea is to on each pull request to verify that a pull request doesn't break the app. Then, once code is merged into the prod branch, we trigger the following deploy script to build and push our code to Github Releases: yarn test Copy this file to deploy.travis.sh [ == osx ]; yarn release docker run --rm -e GH_TOKEN -v :/project -v ~/.cache/electron:/root/.cache/electron -v ~/.cache/electron-builder:/root/.cache/electron-builder electronuserland/builder:wine /bin/bash -c #! /bin/bash if " " $TRAVIS_OS_NAME then # deploy on mac else # deploy on windows and linux " " ${PWD} "yarn --link-duplicates --pure-lockfile && yarn release --linux AppImage --win" fi In order for your script to have permission to upload code to Github Releases, then you will need to set an environment variable that contains an API token. .travis.yml In Github Navigate to your personal settings / Developer Settings / Generate New Token. Then go to your repository settings in Travis and you can add an environment variable. The variable name is and the token is the one you created on Github. Make sure to keep the variable private (the default) on Travis so that it won't print the token in the logs. GH_TOKEN Done! Now all pull requests to master and prod should run tests, and all code merged into the prod branch should trigger a new release. The released assets and downloadable installers will be published to your Github repository under the . releases tab The release will be a draft so after each deployment you need to go in manually and convert from a draft to a published release, which is just the click of a button. Confused? If you get lost feel free to keep looking back at the and also make sure to look at the logged errors in Travis. If you have questions I am available on our discord server at the following: working example repo https://discord.gg/EEkFwbv Also, if you are looking for more advanced options take a look at the . It uses this method along with support for code signing, auto updates, and notarization. Qvault code By Lane Wagner on twitter @wagslane Previously published at https://qvault.io/2019/08/08/automatic-cross-platform-deployments-with-electron-on-a-ci-server-travis/