How can I create a executable file from a Node JS project?

Question

I'm working in a Node JS project, which takes an API, creates objects and saves them into a DB, everything works in it fine, as you can see in one past question I made.

Now I need to create a executable file of it to run it, so I searched about it and found PKG.

The thing is that I installed the package using npm i pkg, and then I ran pkg app.mjs and I got a lot of error messages, all of them look like this:

Warning Failed to make bytecode node16-x64 for file C:\snapshot\weather\node_modules\fetch-blob\file.js

So, I searched and found that I had to use pkg . --debug to look for the error, and showed me that I had to add a bin property, so I added it in my package.json, which looks like this:

{
  "name": "demo",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "app.js",
  "bin": "./app.mjs",
  "module": "CommonJS",
  "type": "commonjs",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
    "start": "node app.mjs",
    "dev": "nodemon app.mjs"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "dotenv": "^10.0.0",
    "nexe": "^4.0.0-beta.19",
    "node-fetch": "^3.1.0",
    "pkg": "^5.5.2",
    "tedious": "^14.0.0"
  }
}

I ran the debug comman and at the end It showed my this error:

C:\snapshot\weather\node_modules\formdata-polyfill\esm.min.js:3 import C from 'fetch-blob' ^^^^^^ SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module.

As you can see, my files were created, when I tried to open them, none of them does something, as they should make some inserts into a DB.

So I would like to know how can I fixed, because I tried what I saw in this question and this issue but nothing solved my problem.

Have somebody created a .exe from Node JS using this? Do you know what causes the error and how can I fix it?

EDIT: I continued searching and watch the issue in Github, so I can't use PKG because apparently this can't be done with ES Modules (imports).

So I decided to look at other options and found about Nexe, so I decided to change into it, I followed all the instructions I saw in this tutorial, and wrote:

nexe app.mjs

And I got this error:

i nexe 4.0.0-beta.19 √ Downloading pre-built Node.js √ Finished in 1.539s Error: https://github.com/nexe/nexe/releases/download/v3.3.3/windows-x64-14.17.6 is not available, create it using the --build flag See nexe -h for usage..

Can anyone tell me some way I can create a exe file from a ES Module? Or what am I doing wrong? I checked my Node JS version and I don't think it is something about it, but if needed, I'm working in v14.17.6.

I watched this question Wyck told me, but it didn't solve my problem either. If any extra explanation is needed, let me know.

Slightly more relevant question than the one you linked: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8173232/how-to-make-exe-files-from-a-node-js-app — Wyck, Jan 31 '22 at 16:15

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 31 '22 at 17:03

pkg should be in devDependencies
scripts should be in package.json "build:win": "npx pkg ./start.js -c package.json -t node14-win-x64",
Add to package.json "pkg": { "assets": [], "targets": [ "node14-win-x64", "node12-macos-x64" ], "outputPath": "./dist" }
Add to assets some files if you need it inside *.exe

How can I create a executable file from a Node JS project?

1 Answers1