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Austin Cunningham
Austin Cunningham

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Create an Electron app on Fedora

#fedora #electron #javascript #linux

Creating the Electron App

Wanted to play around with creating a desktop app with Electron on Fedora. Followed the quick start guide for Electron changing the win.loadFile to win.loadURL to load an existing web app. Code is here here is my main.js

const { app, BrowserWindow } = require('electron') const path = require('path') const createWindow = () => { const win = new BrowserWindow({ width: 1200, height: 850, webPreferences: { preload: path.join(__dirname, 'preload.js') } }) win.loadURL('https://austincunningham.github.io/Git_Repos_Rest_API/lab-4.1-Github-API/index.html') } app.whenReady().then(() => { createWindow() app.on('activate', function () { if (BrowserWindow.getAllWindows().length === 0) createWindow() }) }) app.on('window-all-closed', () => { if (process.platform !== 'darwin') app.quit() })
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Testing the app by running npm start and the app opens
Image of the app open
That seems straight forward.

Building the binary

Again following the quick start guide I get to the npm run make command here is where I hit some trouble

npm run make > electron-github@1.0.0 make /home/austincunningham/repo/electron-github > electron-forge make ✔ Checking your system ✔ Resolving Forge Config An unhandled rejection has occurred inside Forge: Error: Cannot make for deb, the following external binaries need to be installed: dpkg, fakeroot Electron Forge was terminated. Location:
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So I install the missing dependencies

sudo dnf install dpkg sudo dnf install fakeroot
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I rerun the npm run make command

npm run make > electron-github@1.0.0 make /home/austincunningham/repo/electron-github > electron-forge make ✔ Checking your system ✔ Resolving Forge Config An unhandled rejection has occurred inside Forge: Error: Cannot make for rpm, the following external binaries need to be installed: rpmbuild Electron Forge was terminated. Location:
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So I guess there is another missing dependency I try and install rpmbuild

sudo dnf install rpmbuild No match for argument: rpmbuild Error: Unable to find a match: rpmbuild
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I figure it rpm related so Googled it and find https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/create-rpm-package
I install the dependencies from the blog

sudo dnf install -y rpmdevtools rpmlint
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And happy days the npm run make completes

npm run make > electron-github@1.0.0 make /home/austincunningham/repo/electron-github > electron-forge make ✔ Checking your system ✔ Resolving Forge Config We need to package your application before we can make it ✔ Preparing to Package Application for arch: x64 ✔ Preparing native dependencies ✔ Packaging Application Making for the following targets: deb, rpm ✔ Making for target: deb - On platform: linux - For arch: x64 ✔ Making for target: rpm - On platform: linux - For arch: x64
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It built the deb and rpm bundles, guessing need to be run on windows and mac to build their binaries. More to learn here but that's all for now.

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Leo Intriago •

This article could not be more necessary. Thank you!