Build Instructions

    Check the build prerequisites for your platform before proceeding

    Build Tools

    Electron’s Build Tools automate much of the setup for compiling Electron from source with different configurations and build targets. If you wish to set up the environment manually, the instructions are listed below.

    Electron uses for project generation and ninja for building. Project configurations can be found in the and .gni files.

    GN Files

    The following gn files contain the main rules for building Electron:

    • build/args/{testing,release,all}.gn contain the default build arguments for building Electron.

    You’ll need to install depot_tools, the toolset used for fetching Chromium and its dependencies.

    Also, on Windows, you’ll need to set the environment variable DEPOT_TOOLS_WIN_TOOLCHAIN=0. To do so, open Control Panel → System and Security → System → Advanced system settings and add a system variable DEPOT_TOOLS_WIN_TOOLCHAIN with value 0. This tells depot_tools to use your locally installed version of Visual Studio (by default, depot_tools will try to download a Google-internal version that only Googlers have access to).

    If you plan on checking out Electron more than once (for example, to have multiple parallel directories checked out to different branches), using the git cache will speed up subsequent calls to gclient. To do this, set a GIT_CACHE_PATH environment variable:

    Getting the code

    1. $ mkdir electron && cd electron
    2. $ gclient config --name "src/electron" --unmanaged https://github.com/electron/electron
    3. $ gclient sync --with_branch_heads --with_tags
    4. # This will take a while, go get a coffee.

    A note on pulling/pushing

    If you intend to git pull or git push from the official electron repository in the future, you now need to update the respective folder’s origin URLs.

    1. $ cd src/electron
    2. $ git remote remove origin
    3. $ git remote add origin https://github.com/electron/electron
    4. $ git checkout main
    5. $ git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/main
    6. $ cd -

    :memo: gclient works by checking a file called DEPS inside the folder for dependencies (like Chromium or Node.js). Running gclient sync -f ensures that all dependencies required to build Electron match that file.

    So, in order to pull, you’d run the following commands:

    1. $ cd src/electron
    2. $ git pull
    3. $ gclient sync -f

    Building

    Set the environment variable for chromium build tools

    On Linux & MacOS

    1. $ cd src
    2. $ export CHROMIUM_BUILDTOOLS_PATH=`pwd`/buildtools
    1. $ cd src
    2. $ set CHROMIUM_BUILDTOOLS_PATH=%cd%\buildtools

    To generate Testing build config of Electron:

    1. $ gn gen out/Testing --args="import(\"//electron/build/args/testing.gn\")"

    To generate Release build config of Electron:

    Note: This will generate a out/Testing or out/Release build directory under src/ with the testing or release build depending upon the configuration passed above. You can replace Testing|Release with another names, but it should be a subdirectory of out.

    Also you shouldn’t have to run gn gen again—if you want to change the build arguments, you can run gn args out/Testing to bring up an editor. To see the list of available build configuration options, run gn args out/Testing --list.

    To build, run ninja with the electron target: Note: This will also take a while and probably heat up your lap.

    For the testing configuration:

      For the release configuration:

      1. $ ninja -C out/Release electron

      This will build all of what was previously ‘libchromiumcontent’ (i.e. the content/ directory of chromium and its dependencies, incl. WebKit and V8), so it will take a while.

      The built executable will be under ./out/Testing:

      1. $ ./out/Testing/Electron.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron
      2. # or, on Windows
      3. $ ./out/Testing/electron.exe
      4. # or, on Linux
      5. $ ./out/Testing/electron

      On linux, first strip the debugging and symbol information:

      1. $ electron/script/strip-binaries.py -d out/Release

      To package the electron build as a distributable zip file:

      1. $ ninja -C out/Release electron:electron_dist_zip

      Cross-compiling

      To compile for a platform that isn’t the same as the one you’re building on, set the target_cpu and target_os GN arguments. For example, to compile an x86 target from an x64 host, specify in gn args.

      1. $ gn gen out/Testing-x86 --args='... target_cpu = "x86"'

      Not all combinations of source and target CPU/OS are supported by Chromium.

      See the GN reference for allowable values of and target_cpu.

      Windows on Arm (experimental)

      To cross-compile for Windows on Arm, follow Chromium’s guide to get the necessary dependencies, SDK and libraries, then build with ELECTRON_BUILDING_WOA=1 in your environment before running gclient sync.

      Or (if using PowerShell):

      1. $env:ELECTRON_BUILDING_WOA=1
      2. gclient sync -f --with_branch_heads --with_tags

      Next, run gn gen as above with target_cpu="arm64".

      To run the tests, you’ll first need to build the test modules against the same version of Node.js that was built as part of the build process. To generate build headers for the modules to compile against, run the following under src/ directory.

      1. $ ninja -C out/Testing third_party/electron_node:headers

      You can now .

      If you’re debugging something, it can be helpful to pass some extra flags to the Electron binary:

      1. $ npm run test -- \
      2.   --enable-logging -g 'BrowserWindow module'

      Sharing the git cache between multiple machines

      It is possible to share the gclient git cache with other machines by exporting it as SMB share on linux, but only one process/machine can be using the cache at a time. The locks created by git-cache script will try to prevent this, but it may not work perfectly in a network.

      On Windows, SMBv2 has a directory cache that will cause problems with the git cache script, so it is necessary to disable it by setting the registry key

      1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Lanmanworkstation\Parameters\DirectoryCacheLifetime

      to 0. More information:

      This can be set quickly in powershell (ran as administrator):

      1. New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Lanmanworkstation\Parameters" -Name DirectoryCacheLifetime -Value 0 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

      Troubleshooting

      If gclient sync is interrupted the git tree may be left in a bad state, leading to a cryptic message when running gclient sync in the future:

      1. 2> Conflict while rebasing this branch.
      2. 2> Fix the conflict and run gclient again.
      3. 2> See man git-rebase for details.

      If there are no git conflicts or rebases in src/electron, you may need to abort a git am in src:

      I’m being asked for a username/password for chromium-internal.googlesource.com