@electron/get

Download Electron release artifacts

Usage

Simple: Downloading an Electron Binary ZIP

import { download } from '@electron/get';

// NB: Use this syntax within an async function, Node does not have support for
//     top-level await as of Node 12.
const zipFilePath = await download('4.0.4');

Advanced: Downloading a macOS Electron Symbol File

import { downloadArtifact } from '@electron/get';

// NB: Use this syntax within an async function, Node does not have support for
//     top-level await as of Node 12.
const zipFilePath = await downloadArtifact({
  version: '4.0.4',
  platform: 'darwin',
  artifactName: 'electron',
  artifactSuffix: 'symbols',
  arch: 'x64',
});

Specifying a mirror

Anatomy of a download URL, in terms of mirrorOptions:

https://github.com/electron/electron/releases/download/v4.0.4/electron-v4.0.4-linux-x64.zip
|                                                     |       |                           |
-------------------------------------------------------       -----------------------------
                        |                                                   |
              mirror / nightly_mirror                  |    |         customFilename
                                                       ------
                                                         ||
                                                      customDir

Example:

import { download } from '@electron/get';

const zipFilePath = await download('4.0.4', {
  mirrorOptions: {
    mirror: 'https://mirror.example.com/electron/',
    customDir: 'custom',
    customFilename: 'unofficial-electron-linux.zip'
  }
});
// Will download from https://mirror.example.com/electron/custom/unofficial-electron-linux.zip

const nightlyZipFilePath = await download('8.0.0-nightly.20190901', {
  mirrorOptions: {
    nightly_mirror: 'https://nightly.example.com/',
    customDir: 'nightlies',
    customFilename: 'nightly-linux.zip'
  }
});
// Will download from https://nightly.example.com/nightlies/nightly-linux.zip

customDir can have the placeholder {{ version }}, which will be replaced by the version specified (without the leading v). For example:

const zipFilePath = await download('4.0.4', {
  mirrorOptions: {
    mirror: 'https://mirror.example.com/electron/',
    customDir: 'version-{{ version }}',
    platform: 'linux',
    arch: 'x64'
  }
});
// Will download from https://mirror.example.com/electron/version-4.0.4/electron-v4.0.4-linux-x64.zip

How It Works

This module downloads Electron to a known place on your system and caches it so that future requests for that asset can be returned instantly. The cache locations are:

• Linux: $XDG_CACHE_HOME or ~/.cache/electron/
• MacOS: ~/Library/Caches/electron/
• Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%/electron/Cache or ~/AppData/Local/electron/Cache/

By default, the module uses got as the downloader. As a result, you can use the same options via downloadOptions.

Progress Bar

By default, a progress bar is shown when downloading an artifact for more than 30 seconds. To disable, set the ELECTRON_GET_NO_PROGRESS environment variable to any non-empty value, or set quiet to true in downloadOptions. If you need to monitor progress yourself via the API, set getProgressCallback in downloadOptions, which has the same function signature as got's downloadProgress event callback.

Proxies

Downstream packages should utilize the initializeProxy function to add HTTP(S) proxy support. If the environment variable ELECTRON_GET_USE_PROXY is set, it is called automatically. A different proxy module is used, depending on the version of Node in use, and as such, there are slightly different ways to set the proxy environment variables. For Node 10 and above, global-agent is used. Otherwise, global-tunnel-ng is used. Refer to the appropriate linked module to determine how to configure proxy support.