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What is main difference between electron-builder and electron-packager. Is there some example projects for both? Which is better for standalone .exe application build?

d512
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Ondrej Sika
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5 Answers5

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Update August 2019

I've been using electron-builder for more than a year now, packaging my app for macOS, Windows 10, and Ubuntu Desktop. The maintainer, develar, added a great docs site earlier this year, and has been staying on top of gatekeeper changes to macOS to ensure installers and updaters still work.

Update November 2018

The primary developer of electron-builder has continued to put substantial work into the project, including support for Electron 3, new artifact publishing destinations, and releases regularly with bug fixes. The prior maintainer stepped down from electron-packager, and they still don't have a windows maintainer, and still doesn't have support for signed windows binaries. For reference:

electron-packager ( 72 releases,  17 open issues,   639 closed)
electron-builder  (651 releases, 399 open issues, 2,603 closed)

Update December 2017

Electron-builder has been robustly worked on over the past year, pushing out new versions with features and bugfixes weekly. The documentation at https://www.electron.build/ is excellent, and following the "Quick Setup Guide" (on the first page, several sections down) includes a boilerplate project and step-by-step instructions.

Update June 2017

electron-builder does both the packaging step (like what electron-packager does), and builds platform-specific installers (like pkg or Mac AppStore for Mac, NSIS or Windows Store for windows, and AppImage for linux).

For my existing project, electron-forge failed with a "missing dependency" that was present in my package.json and node_modules).

It's not well documented, but electron-builder switched from Squirrel.windows to NSIS earlier this year as the default windows installer. NSIS makes substantially smaller installer packages (30mb down from 90mb, in my project's case).

Original post

As of March 2017, in large part, they've got feature parity. I've found the following:

  • They are both in the "electron-userland" org, so they're both "legit."
  • electron-packager doesn't have a windows maintainer
  • electron-builder has more contributors, and many more closed issues, so there may have been more bugs, or more users. electron-packager has more stars.
  • electron-builder supports substantially more target formats than electron-packager
  • electron-forge is based on electron-packager, so that might be an easier "out of the box" experience.
mrm
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electron-packager was (update: changed in this commit: "refactor: merge electron-packager") used by electron-builder. This article states

If you really want to go to town, take a look at electron-builder which takes the packages produced by electron-packager and creates automated installers.

RationalDev likes GoFundMonica
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    This is incorrect: I don't see any reference to electron-packager in the package.json of electron-builder. https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=electron-packager&type= – mrm Mar 26 '17 at 03:21
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    That's because it doesn't - anymore. – daniel.gindi Mar 14 '18 at 06:33
  • I have also used electron-builder for my side project: https://github.com/hasukmistry/password-manager – Hasmukh Mistry Jun 22 '20 at 10:41
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electron-packager packs source code and generates executable file.

electron-builder can generate installer with “auto update” support in electron.

http://electron.atom.io/docs/api/auto-updater/

Jason Yost
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jamesxiang
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  • hmm `electron-packager` only seems to create a folder with an executable file that launches the application. it doesnt seem to create an actual installer?? – oldboy Feb 09 '20 at 07:01
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Ok, I know this thread is old but I would like to suggest that anyone / everyone uses electron-forge, it will make your lives better and I think you will feel more intelligent by using it. I personally had waking nightmares confronting packaging woes. It has a dead-simple cli, install it globally and your dreams may come true.

I sure hope it helps! Don't worry, I didn't make it but it helps me make desktop apps.

aestrro
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    I wish I'd have found this comment before wasting the last two days messing with both builder and packager. – codestr Nov 28 '17 at 20:21
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    Are you able to arrange auto-updates on all three platforms with electron-forge, like you can in electron-builder? – jayarjo Mar 05 '19 at 05:32
  • At the time of this post electron-forge has many vulnerabilities while builder and packager has none https://snyk.io/test/npm/electron-forge https://snyk.io/test/npm/electron-builder https://snyk.io/test/npm/electron-packager – Inkh Su Tesou Dec 14 '19 at 17:44
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    @InkhSuTesou is that much of a concern, though? All of those vulnerabilities are in the specific dependency versions used by the tools. Most of those vulnerabilities are related to denial of service and none of them sound like issues that would get into your built package. forge, builder, and packager are all tools you run locally, not tools with an API that you deploy. To exploit those issues, an attacker would need to affect your source tree or CI server, and if they can do either of those things then they don't need a lodash vulnerability. – bobpaul May 28 '20 at 22:43
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You can use this https://github.com/SimulatedGREG/electron-vue/ to generate template using vue and electron, it support both electron-packager and electron-builder.

For me, I always prefer electron-builder because it is much simpler for me and can generate binary using travis ci and appveyor and pulish to github release, like this repo I made https://github.com/gengjiawen/android-studio-helper/releases.

Geng Jiawen
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