Project Structure

When it comes to making electron apps, project structure is a little different. If you have used the official vuejs-templates/webpack setup before, then the structure should feel quite familiar. The documentation in this section attempts to explain a general overview of how the boilerplate works and the differences when your application is built.

Single package.json Setup

There was a time not too long ago where a two package.json setup was neccessary, but thanks to efforts from @electron-userland, both electron-packager and electron-builder now fully support a single package.json setup.

dependencies

These dependencies will be included in your final production app. So if your application needs a certain module to function, then install it here!

devDependencies

These dependencies will not be included in your final production app. Here you can install modules needed specifically for development like build scripts, webpack loaders, etc.

Installing Native NPM Modules

We need to make sure our native npm modules are built against electron. To do that, we can use electron-rebuild, but to make things simpler, it is highly recommended to use electron-builder for your build tool as a lot of these tasks are handled for you.

On the subject of the main process

During development you may notice src/main/index.dev.js. This file is used specifically for development and is used to install dev-tools. This file should not have to be modified, but can be used to extend your development needs. Upon building, webpack will step in and create a bundle with src/main/index.js as its entry file.