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Supposed I have written a Node.js application, and I now would like to distribute it. Of course, I want to make it easy for the user, hence I do not want him to install Node.js, run npm install and then manually type node app.js.

What I'd prefer was a single executable file, e.g. an .exe file on Windows.

How could I approach this?

I am aware of this thread, anyway this is only about Windows. How could I achieve this in a platform-independent manner? Any ideas? Best practices? ...?

The perfect solution was a "compiler" I can give a source folder to. The source folder contains the app itself in various .js files, the node_modules folder and some metadata, such as the package.json. The output should be binaries for various platforms, such as Windows, OS X and Linux.

Oh, and what's important: I do not want to make any changes to the source code, so calls to require with relative paths should still work, even if this relative path is now inside the packaged app.

Any ideas?

PS: I do not want the user to install Node.js independently, it should be included inside the executable as well.

Community
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Golo Roden
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    Is this a webapp? (Meaning in has a web based UI) or a simpler command line app that does something else? I suspect this gets much harder if you need to spawn a browser of some kind. – Alex Wayne Jan 14 '13 at 06:18
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    Number of node.js community members who deploy to unix OSes this way: zero. Are you sure the tried-and-true approaches like a tar archive, deb, or rpm are not acceptable for you? Are you inventing a problem to solve that doesn't truly exist? – Peter Lyons Jan 14 '13 at 06:18
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    @ Alex Wayne: It's a server-side app, hence no need to start a browser. – Golo Roden Jan 14 '13 at 06:22
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    PS: Moreover, my question includes whether there is *one* tool I can use to create a solution for any platform, so even a tool which automatically creates a .exe file for Windows and a .deb file would be great ;-) – Golo Roden Jan 14 '13 at 08:27
  • @PeterLyons I find that hard to believe. I can also prove it. – oxygen Nov 18 '16 at 16:06

7 Answers7

68

Meanwhile I have found the (for me) perfect solution: nexe, which creates a single executable from a Node.js application including all of its modules.

It's the next best thing to an ideal solution.

WasiF
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Golo Roden
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    According to the documentation, nexe supports Windows now :) – Lea Rosema Mar 03 '15 at 13:48
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    I bundled my nodeJS app and I got this error: Error: ENOENT, no such file or directory '..../release/types/mime.types' I looked at the release folder, the types/mime.types folder was never created. Anyone got any ideas? – Gang Su Apr 21 '15 at 23:39
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    As the current maintainer of nexe, native modules have been in progress for a bit now, and rest assured will be implemented soon! – Jared Allard Aug 09 '15 at 16:14
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    Great, thanks for the update :-) – Golo Roden Aug 09 '15 at 16:14
  • The changelog file and "Releases" page for `nexe` don't seem to be kept up to date so I'm not sure what version this happened in; but it seems this does now support all 3 major platforms, including Windows. [[source](https://github.com/jaredallard/nexe/issues/38#issuecomment-88966359)] –  Sep 18 '15 at 05:34
  • Has anyone tried for Windows ? if yes then please share the code. I am not able to create executable for windows. @terabaud – Jugal Panchal Oct 20 '15 at 10:14
  • Some time ago, I made a simple node.js app that I use as a post-build event in a visual studio project at work, it simply applies jshint/uglify/less/autoprefixer... and outputs errors in MSBuild error notation (so that errors appear in the ide's error list and you can jump to the file and line by clicking the error). I was able to create a single .exe for this. When I'm back at work, I'll revise it and put it on github. Stay tuned :) – Lea Rosema Oct 20 '15 at 19:20
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    The lack of support for native modules is quite a hindrance. Also, latest releases of nexe have a hard time with dynamic paths, which are very common in the most popular npm packages. – ruffrey Mar 30 '16 at 16:42
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First, we're talking about packaging a Node.js app for workshops, demos, etc. where it can be handy to have an app "just running" without the need for the end user to care about installation and dependencies.

You can try the following setup:

  1. Get your apps source code
  2. npm install all dependencies (via package.json) to the local node_modules directory. It is important to perform this step on each platform you want to support separately, in case of binary dependencies.
  3. Copy the Node.js binary – node.exe on Windows, (probably) /usr/local/bin/node on OS X/Linux to your project's root folder. On OS X/Linux you can find the location of the Node.js binary with which node.

For Windows:
Create a self extracting archive, 7zip_extra supports a way to execute a command right after extraction, see: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/39048-how-to-make-a-7-zip-switchless-installer/.

For OS X/Linux:
You can use tools like makeself or unzipsfx (I don't know if this is compiled with CHEAP_SFX_AUTORUN defined by default).

These tools will extract the archive to a temporary directory, execute the given command (e.g. node app.js) and remove all files when finished.

spiffytech
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Frederic
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15

Not to beat a dead horse, but the solution you're describing sounds a lot like Node-Webkit.

From the Git Page:

node-webkit is an app runtime based on Chromium and node.js. You can write native apps in HTML and JavaScript with node-webkit. It also lets you call Node.js modules directly from the DOM and enables a new way of writing native applications with all Web technologies.

These instructions specifically detail the creation of a single file app that a user can execute, and this portion describes the external dependencies.

I'm not sure if it's the exact solution, but it seems pretty close.

Hope it helps!

Jason Nichols
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    Node-Webkit is just fantastic, especially to demo a Node.js solution, you have everything you need in one place. – Ewald Sep 11 '14 at 09:51
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    The electron framework is also good. But both nwjs and electron are focused on UI-centric apps. Packaging up a server app is probably possible, but not a typical use case. In my experience it's been extra work to hide the UI and run it from the CLI. – ruffrey Mar 30 '16 at 16:45
  • Is Nodewebkit packaging legal according to nodejs license? – Pacerier Oct 30 '17 at 21:24
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    @Pacerier I believe it is, but IANAL. That being said, Electron has really superseded it, and I'm sure GitHub's lawyers made sure it's compliant. – Jason Nichols Oct 31 '17 at 14:53
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JXcore will allow you to turn any nodejs application into a single executable, including all dependencies, in either Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X.

Here is a link to the installer: https://github.com/jxcore/jxcore-release

And here is a link to how to set it up: http://jxcore.com/turn-node-applications-into-executables/

It is very easy to use and I have tested it in both Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.04.

FYI: JXcore is a fork of NodeJS so it is 100% NodeJS compatible, with some extra features.

Joel
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Ian Tait
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    jxcore is no longer being actively developed: http://www.nubisa.com/nubisa-halting-active-development-on-jxcore-platform/ – superEb Jun 03 '16 at 20:04
  • Alternatively, you could use EncloseJS: http://enclosejs.com/ – 000000000000000000000 Jun 07 '16 at 09:56
  • @000000000000000000000 EncloseJS is deprecated. Igor encourages users to use zeit/pkg instead: https://github.com/zeit/pkg – DARKGuy Feb 11 '18 at 08:20
  • I tried to compact an Appium installation into an Exe file with zeit/pkg. It failed completely. The 310 MB on disk where packed into a 18MB Exe file which obviously did not work. – Elmue May 18 '18 at 17:17
7

There are a number of steps you have to go through to create an installer and it varies for each Operating System. For Example:

coolaj86
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7

In addition to nexe, browserify can be used to bundle up all your dependencies as a single .js file. This does not bundle the actual node executable, just handles the javascript side. It too does not handle native modules. The command line options for pure node compilation would be browserify --output bundle.js --bare --dg false input.js.

Nakedible
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-1

You could create a git repo and setup a link to the node git repo as a dependency. Then any user who clones the repo could also install node. 

#git submodule [--quiet] add [-b branch] [-f|--force]
git submodule add /var/Node-repo.git common

You could easily package a script up to automatically clone the git repo you have hosted somewhere and "install" from one that one script file.

#!/bin/sh
#clone git repo
git clone your-repo.git
HarrisonJackson
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    But this would give you the **source** repository, not the binary. The user still needs to compile Node.js, given that all dependencies for doing so are already present (which is not the case on Windows/OS X 'out of the box' installations). – Frederic Jan 30 '13 at 10:34