bundling precompiled binary into electron app

Question

Is there a good solution on how to include third party pre compiled binaries like imagemagick into an electron app? there are node.js modules but they are all wrappers or na

Answer 1

Heavily based on Ganesh's answer, but simplified somewhat. Also I am using the Vue CLI Electron Builder Plugin so the config has to go in a slightly different place.

1. Create a resources directory. Place all your files in there.
2. Add this to vue.config.js:

module.exports = {
  pluginOptions: {
    electronBuilder: {
      builderOptions: {
        ...
        "extraResources": [
          {
            "from": "resources",
            "to": ".",
            "filter": "**/*"
          }
        ],
        ...
      }
    }
  }
}

3. Create a file called resources.ts in your src folder, with these contents:

import path from 'path';
import { remote } from 'electron';

// Get the path that `extraResources` are sent to. This is `/Resources`
// on macOS. remote.app.getAppPath() returns `/Resources/app.asar` so
// we just get the parent directory. If the app is not packaged we just use
// `/resources`.
export const resourcesPath = remote.app.isPackaged ?
                             path.dirname(remote.app.getAppPath()) :
                             path.resolve('resources');

Note I haven't tested this on Windows/Linux but it should work assuming app.asar is in the resources directory on those platforms (I assume so).

4. Use it like this:

import { resourcesPath } from '../resources'; // Path to resources.ts

...
    loadFromFile(resourcesPath + '/your_file');