local-electron.md

description
Integrate a local build of Electron into your Forge app.

Local Electron Plugin

{% hint style="info" %} This plugin should only be used by people who are building Electron locally themselves. If you want to use a fork of Electron, check out the environment variables you can use to configure @electron/get. {% endhint %}

This plugin allows you to both run and build your app using a local build of Electron. This can be incredibly useful if you want to test a feature or a bug fix in your app before making a PR up to the Electron repository.

If you want to set up a local build of Electron, you should check out Electron Build Tools.

Installation

{% tabs %} {% tab title="Yarn" %}

yarn add --dev @electron-forge/plugin-local-electron

{% endtab %}

{% tab title="npm" %}

npm install --save-dev @electron-forge/plugin-local-electron

{% endtab %} {% endtabs %}

Usage

Once you have a working build of Electron, point the plugin's electronPath config option to the folder containing the built Electron binary.

All possible configuration options are documented in LocalElectronPluginConfig.

{% code title="forge.config.js" %}

{
  plugins: [
    {
      name: '@electron-forge/plugin-local-electron',
      config: {
        electronPath: '/Users/me/projects/electron/out/Testing',
      },
    },
  ],
}

{% endcode %}

{% hint style="info" %} Please note that the plugin only accepts absolute paths. You should use Node's path.resolve() to make things deterministic. {% endhint %}