Writing Makers

An Electron Forge Maker has to export a single class that extends our base maker. The base maker can be depended on by installing@electron-forge/maker-base.

The MakerBase class has some helper methods for your convenience. Check out the interface of MakerBase for more advanced API details.

Method	Description
ensureDirectory(path)	Ensures the directory exists and is forced to be empty. This is a destructive operation.
ensureFile(path)	Ensures the path to the file exists and the file does not exist, if the file exists it is deleted and the path created.
isInstalled(moduleName)	Checks if the given module is installed, used for testing if optional dependencies are installed or not.

Your maker must implement two methods:

isSupportedOnCurrentPlatform(): boolean

This method must synchronously return a boolean indicating whether or not this maker can run on the current platform. Normally this is just a process.platform check but it can be a deeper check for dependencies like fake-root or other required external build tools.

If the issue is a missing dependency you should log out a helpful error message telling the developer exactly what is missing and if possible how to get it.

export default class MyMaker extends MakerBase {
  isSupportedOnCurrentPlatform () {
    return process.platform === 'linux' && this.isFakeRootInstalled();
  }

  isFakeRootInstalled () { /* ... */ }
}

make(options: MakerOptions): Promise<string[]>

Makers must implement this method and return an array of absolute paths to the artifacts this maker generated. If an error occurs, reject the promise and Electron Forge will stop the make process.

The config for the maker will be available on this.config.

The options object is documented in MakerOptions.

export default class MyMaker extends MakerBase {
  async make (opts) {
    const pathToMagicInstaller = await makeMagicInstaller(opts.dir);
    return [pathToMagicInstaller];
  }
}