Electron - Creating a windows portable executable

electron-creating-portable-windows-application.md

How to create a portable windows application without an installer from an electron project:

1. Clone the electron-quick-start repo:

git clone https://github.com/electron/electron-quick-start

2. yarn
3. Make your application - probably edit main.js to navigate to some URL
4. yarn add electron-packager
5. Edit package.json - update the 'name' and add a new script 'packager':

{
  "name": "my-app-name",
  ...
  "scripts": {
	"start": "electron .",
    "packager": "electron-packager ./ --platform=win32"
  }
}

4. 'npm start' will bring up the application
5. 'npm run packager' will package the app for windows. You will see a new directory 'my-app-name-win32-x64' in the top directory of the project, with a my-app-name.exe

FYI, I found this gist looking for an ALTERNATIVE to the steps above. Following this guide creates a portable executable in a sense, but that resulting executable still writes to %APPDATA% which IMO is not very portable. (EXAMPLE: running the .exe from a flash drive on different machines, you'll find that none of the config settings / files / customizations will not be retained).

@pa-0
And what other alternative for portability you find better?

@pa-0 And what other alternative for portability you find better?

Maybe making it based on portableapps project platform. This is by far the best portable platform on Windows. Everything related to the program will be kept into a single directory, no changes to registry. On the other hand Electron applications are the easiest to place into portableapps project, yet you won't find any help on the net. Sad.

@jrobbl, i agree with what @Svetloslav suggested. That is probably the best option unless electron maintainers decide to expose some API to make it possible (which I doubt will happen, at least anytime soon) or you maintain a personal fork of the repo and make the changes yourself.