How to package and distribute your apps

Make a package

Since our package system is similar to LÖVE, following guides are modified from its Wiki.

An app's package is a zip archive with .nw as extension. Three caveats:

• There must be a package.json file that describes the package, see Manifest format.
• The package.json file must be at the root of the archive.
• In the .nw, the file and directory path names are case sensitive. This can be puzzling for Windows and Mac OS X users, whose filesystem is case insensitive, and whose apps may work when unzipped but not when packaged.

Here's how to proceed to generate a working .nw file:

Windows

1. Create a zip file (this is built into XP, Vista and 7)
2. Copy all of your files into the zip file, retaining directory structure and making sure that the package.json file is in the root directory (if you make a zip file containing a folder with your stuff in it, then it's not going to work)
3. Rename the file extension from .zip to .nw. By default, file extensions may be hidden. You need to (press alt), go to folder options and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types" to be able to rename the zip.

Linux / OS X

From the command line:

1. Go to your project directory a la cd ~/Projects/my_app
2. Run zip -r ../${PWD##*/}.nw *
3. Your fully-prepared .nw file shall be located right outside of your project directory
4. Cake!

Making an executable file out of a .nw file

Many people are (understandably) concerned about what end-users need to do in order to run an app. If users receive a .nw alone, they will naturally need node-webkit installed (or at least unzipped) in order to run it. But, with node-webkit, you can merge the .nw file with the node-webkit executable.

In general, it's recommended to offer a .nw for download, and optionally "merged" versions for the platforms where this makes things simpler.

Two things should be noted:

• The end result will not be a single executable, you must also include some DLLs in your zip-file.
• The resulting executable from the merge will still be readable by archiving software, such as WinZip.

Windows

Here's how to do it on Windows. In a console, type this:

copy /b nw.exe+app.nw app.exe 

Then, all you have to do is zip app.exe and required DLLs, and distribute them. Yes; this does mean that the game will have a private copy of node-webkit, but there's nothing wrong with that. It also means that you will have to create one package for each platform you would like to support, or simply offer the .nw alone for the other platforms.

And please also note that the nw.pak must also be distributed along with the app.exe.

Linux

On Linux, it's similar:

cat /usr/bin/nw app.nw > app && chmod +x app 

Then, you'll have to make a package for various packaging systems with dependencies as the node-webkit package. Were you to make a .deb package this way, for instance, the user would not have to install the node-webkit package separately.

And please note that the nw.pak file must also be in the same directory with the app file, otherwise you would expect blank page for some features.

Eventually, we will provide scripts which do this automatically for various package systems. You'll have to figure it out yourself until then.

Mac OS X

Following guides apply to node-webkit >= 0.2.4

On OS X, the node-webkit.app is a directory that can be easily changed. To make node-webkit automatically open your app, you need to put your app file under Contents/Resources and name it app.nw. The bonus over other platforms is, the app.nw needs not to be a zip file, if you want to speed up startup, you can make app.nw your app's directory.

And you need to modify following files to make a real distribution of yours:

• Contents/Resources/app.icns: icon of your app.
• Contents/Info.plist: the apple package description file.

About the Info.plist file, you can view Implementing Cocoa's Standard About Panel on how this file will influence your app and what fields you should modify.