create-windowless-app v11.0.3
Create Windowless App
Create a windowless Node.js app.
You can also start from this template repository create-windowless-app-template
Create Windowless App works on Windows 64-bit only If something doesn't work, please file an issue.
Pre-Requisites for template to work:
NodeJS
version20.0.0
or higherMSBuild.exe
must be in the PATH environment variablesigntool
must be in the PATH environment variable
Quick Overview
npx create-windowless-app my-app
Note: There's an open issue regarding running npx on Windows when the user folder path contains a space. For more info and a workaround: npx#146
npm install -g create-windowless-app
And then you can run:
create-windowless-app my-app
Or in interactive mode:
npx create-windowless-app --interactive
Project Structure
create-windowless-app creates the following files:
my-app
├── node_modules
├── package.json
├── sea-config.json
├── tsconfig.json
├── tsconfig.build.json
├── webpack.config.js
├── launcher
│ ├── launcher.cs
│ ├── launcher.csproj
| ├── launcher.ico
| └── launcherCompiler.ts
├── resources
│ └── bin
│ └── my-app-launcher.exe
└───src
└── index.js
No configuration or complicated folder structures, just the files you need to build your app.
Once the installation is done, you can build the project
cd my-app
npm run build
Then you can find in your my-app\dist folder the following files:
- my-app.exe is the compiled app, with Node.js bundled (using Single Executable Applications)
- my-app-launcher.exe is the compiled launcher.cs file that executes my-app.exe without a console window
- snoretoast-x64.exe allows windows notification (using node-notifier)
- my-app.log will be generated on first run (using winston logger)
create-windowless-app CLI
create-windowless-app <project-directory> [options]
Options:
--no-typescript use javascript rather than typescript
--no-husky do not install husky pre-commit hook for building launcher
--icon <icon> override default launcher icon file
--interactive interactive mode
Only <project-directory> is required.
Why?
Node.js does not have a native windowless mode (like java has javaw). Sometimes, you want to run an app as a scheduled task that runs in the background, or run a long task (i.e. a server) but do not want a console that must always be open. Best solution I could find is using a script that executes the Node.js in windowless mode
This package comes to do the following: 1) Compile a Node.js (javascript/typescript) project into an *.exe file bundled with Node.js, so no installation is needed 2) Compile a C# launcher that executes the compiled project, in windowless mode
Template project
The "Hello World" template is a POC containing 2 features you might want when running a windowless app: 1) Logger 2) Notifications
The template project build script does the following things 1) Compiles TypeScript to JavaScript (if in a TypeScript template) 2) Runs WebPack to bundle all JavaScript into a single file, and copy binary files into the "dist" folder 3) Runs Node's single executable applications scripts to compile the single WebPack JavaScript output file to an exe file bundled with Node.js (Currently experimental in Node.js 20)
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