Use amazon s3 with electron-builder's auto updater

Question

How can I use electron-builder's auto-update feature with Amazon S3 in my electron app?

Maybe someone who has already implemented it, can give more details than those which are provided in the electron-builder documentation?

Answer 1

Yeah I'm agree with you, I've been through there recently...

Even if i'm late, I will try to tell as much as I know for others!

In my case, I'm using electron-builder to package my electron/anguler app.

To use electron-builder, I suggest you to create a file called electron-builder.json at project root.

Thats the content of mine :

{
  "productName": "project-name",
  "appId": "org.project.project-name",
  "artifactName": "${productName}-setup-${version}.${ext}", // this will be the output artifact name
  "directories": {
    "output": "builds/"  // The output directory...
  },
  "files": [ //included/excluded files 
    "dist/",
    "node_modules/",
    "package.json",
    "**/*",
    "!**/*.ts",
    "!*.code-workspace",
    "!package-lock.json",
    "!src/",
    "!e2e/",
    "!hooks/",
    "!angular.json",
    "!_config.yml",
    "!karma.conf.js",
    "!tsconfig.json",
    "!tslint.json"
  ],
  "publish" : {
    "provider": "generic",
    "url": "https://project-release.s3.amazonaws.com",
    "path": "bucket-path"
  },
  "nsis": {
    "oneClick": false,
    "allowToChangeInstallationDirectory": true
  },
  "mac": {
    "icon": "src/favicon.ico"
  },
  "win": {
    "icon": "src/favicon.ico"
  },
  "linux": {
    "icon": "src/favicon.png"
  }
}

As you can see, you need to add publish config if you want to publish the app automaticly to s3 with electron-buider. The thing I don't like with that, is that all artifacts and files are all located in the same folder. In my case, like you can see in package.json below I decided to package it manually with electron-builder build -p never. This is basically telling never publish it, but I needed it because without it, it would not generate the latest.yml file. I'm using Gitlab-ci to generate the artefacts, then I use a script to publish it on s3, but you can can use -p always option if you want.

Electron-builder need the latest.yml file, because this is how he knoes if the artefact on s3 is more recent.

latest.yml content exemple :

version: 1.0.1
files:
  - url: project-setup-1.0.0.exe
    sha512: blablablablablablablabla==
    size: 72014605
path: project-setup-1.0.0.exe
sha512: blablablablablabla==
releaseDate: '2019-03-10T22:18:19.735Z'

One other important thing to mension is that electron-builder will try to fetch content at the url you provided in electron-builder.json publish config like so :

https://project-release.s3.amazonaws.com/latest.yml

https://project-release.s3.amazonaws.com/project-setup-1.0.0.exe

And this is the default uploaded content

For that, you need to have your s3 bucket public so every one with the app can fetch newest versions...

Here's the policy :

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "PublicReadGetObject",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": "*",
            "Action": [
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:GetObjectAcl",
                "s3:GetObjectVersion",
                "s3:ListBucket"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name/*",
                "arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Replace your-bucket-name

---

Second, to package the app, I added a script to package.json. ("build:prod" for angular only)

  "scripts": {
    "build:prod": "npm run build -- -c production",
    "package:linux": "npm run build:prod && electron-builder build --linux -p never",
    "package:windows": "npm run build:prod && electron-builder build --windows -p never",
    "package:mac": "npm run build:prod && electron-builder build --mac -p never",
  },

Finally, here's a really well written article here that work with gitlab-ci.

I might have forgotten some parts, ask for any questions!