FAQs.md

FAQs

Why do you set package.json:build.packed to false by default?

NW.js is not Electron. Using a zip file in NW.js, no matter as a separated .nw or combined with the executable, will require unzipping at every time the app launches, which results in a longer launch time, current working directory change and possibly slient crashes if unzipped path is longer than 255/260 characters.

If you want to reduce the amount of files, try using webpack or something like that to build sources, uglify and pack most node modules into bundles. devDependencies are ignored by nwjs-builder-phoenix automatically (so if a node module is supposed to be packed into bundles, e.g. native addons, make it a dependency).

Use the following code snippet to avoid packing dependencies into bundles.

// webpack.config.js

const { dependencies } = require('./package.json');

const externals = {};
Object.keys(dependencies || {}).map((dependency) => {
    externals[dependency] = `commonjs2 ${ dependency }`;
});

module.exports = {
    // I think `electron-renderer` works well with NW.js projects.
    // If there is any better option, please tell me :)
    target: 'electron-renderer',
    externals,
};

Icons on Windows?

• Prepare an .png file with 256x256 resolution, and use iConvertIcons or something like that to generate ready-to-use .ico and .icns.
• Set package.json:build.win.icon to the path of the .ico file.
• Set package.json:window.icon to the path of a .png file.
• Save and build.

Windows Explorer might not reflect the changes immediately, if you have everything done and still see a default icon, check with something like Resource Hacker and restart Windows Explorer.

Building for NSIS target takes a long time, what can I do?

Please follow evshiron/nwjs-builder-phoenix#7, before that you can add --concurrent to enable concurrent building, which should reduce time when building for multiple platforms.

How can I use nwjs-builder-phoenix with Chrome Apps?

Simply add --chrome-app to the commandline arguments which enables support for Chrome Apps.

Also configurations should be set in manifest.json instead of package.json but within the same build property.

What's nsis target? What's the difference between nsis and nsis7z targets?

nsis target will build NSIS installers (and updaters when package.json:build.nsis.diffUpdaters is true) for Windows.

nsis7z target will use 7za to compress and Nsis7z plug-in to extract, instead of the built-in LZMA compression, resulting in a better and faster compression. But it doesn't list installed files, only a percentage indicating the progress of extraction when installing.

Error: ERROR_EXTRACTING archive = xxx?

Remove the archive and try again. Usually it's because of the broken extracted .tar. If removing doesn't fix, feel free to post issues.