What is the purpose of buildResources folder in electron-builder building process?

Question

I'm reading through electron and electron-builder docs, but I still do not quite understand what is the purpose of the buildResources folder?

Here's what a configuration doc for electron-builder says:

buildResources = build String - The path to build resources.

Kind of self-explanatory... But how or when they are involved in the build process, especially having that:

...build resources is not packed into the app. If you need to use some files, e.g. as tray icon, please include required files explicitly

Can we simply put those icon files in an arbitrary folder and then copy over into the app/ manually (since we need to include buildResources manually anyway)?

score 11 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 10 '20 at 07:47

TL;DR:

As far as I can tell from a quick glance at the source code, the buildResources folder is used to hold additional scripts, plugins, etc. that can be used by the package building software. Electron-builder doesn't generate the packages itself, it uses tools like NSIS.

Explanation:

I've had the same question and unfortunately find an answer for this isn't very straight-forward. The docs entry is pretty useless. I found out that someone asked about it in the GitHub issues but never got an answer.

I decided to dig in the code a bit myself to find out what it does. In NsisTargets.ts, you can see that the buildResources folder can contain custom includes and plugins for NSIS.

// NsisTargets.ts
taskManager.add(async () => {
      const userPluginDir = path.join(packager.info.buildResourcesDir, pluginArch)
      const stat = await statOrNull(userPluginDir)
      if (stat != null && stat.isDirectory()) {
        scriptGenerator.addPluginDir(pluginArch, userPluginDir)
      }
    })

// [...]

taskManager.add(async () => {
        const customInclude = await packager.getResource(this.options.include, "installer.nsh")
        if (customInclude != null) {
          scriptGenerator.addIncludeDir(packager.info.buildResourcesDir)
          scriptGenerator.include(customInclude)
        }
      })

and in pkg.ts it's used to load additional scripts to the pkg builder:

// pkg.ts
if (options.scripts != null) {
      args.push("--scripts", path.resolve(this.packager.info.buildResourcesDir, options.scripts))
    }

It appears as though buildResources can contain assets/scripts specifically used for the build process. That also explains why the contents of buildResources aren't included in the resulting app.asar file.

If you include corresponding code snippets that you referenced into your answer, I will mark it as correct. Code mutates so that link might not stay actual for long, that's why. — jayarjo, Apr 09 '20 at 11:57
@jayarjo I think that the links point to the specific commit and as such should always work but I added some code snippets nonetheless. Thanks! — Kerim Güney, Apr 09 '20 at 22:23
@KerimGüney Also, per the docs, if you want to use license files for multiple languages, they need to be in the buldResources folder. — knaos, Mar 29 '21 at 12:45

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 11 '19 at 01:34

5

So, I'm going to say straight away that the documentation for this option is just awful.

Files included in buildResources will appear in the asar file which you can find documentation about on electron's website.

The option files will include files such as pictures which are not accessible in the asar file.

I.E.

given I have a folder called assets in my build folder I want to include with my app.

"files": [
  "./build/**/*"
],
"directories": {
  "buildResources": "assets"
}

This will put all folders inside build into the asar file, which you can then unpack by including,

"asarUnpack": "**/assets/*"

This will put the folder assets into the build folder in the app directory.

answered Mar 11 '19 at 01:34

Daniel Hix

59
4

2

But documentation says that nothing from `buildResources` will be auto-included into asar file? That's what I observe here as well btw. – jayarjo Mar 11 '19 at 07:28
1

I appreciate the effort, but this didn't really explain anything. it's also wrong. The `buildResources` folders are't included in the asar file. I also don't quite understand what the point of explaining the "files" field was, which is incidentally also wrong. Did you by chance mix up the two? Even then it doesn't really explain what `buildResources` does. – Kerim Güney Apr 08 '20 at 17:16

What is the purpose of buildResources folder in electron-builder building process?

2 Answers2