Human & ElectronJS

Test app for Human library with ElectronJS and ElectronForge

Structure

• app/main.js
  electonjs main entry point
• app/prerender.js
  electronjs prerenderer, unusued
• app/index.html
  main page, loaded by main.js
• app/renderer.ts:
  actual code that imports and initialized human
  compiled by build process into app/renderer.js
  and loaded from app/index.html

Build & Run

• npm run transpile
  transpiles app/prerender.ts to app/prerender.js compatible with ElectronJS
  internally used by all other build processes
• npm run start
  runs transpile and starts Electron app in dev mode (no packaging)
• npm run package
  packages app as an executable for current platform
  output is created in out/human-electron-<platform-name>
• npm run make
  runs transpile, package and finally a make using Electron-Forge
  packages app as an native os package (e.g. rpm or deb package)
  output is created in out/make

Note: If you want to cross-compile to a platform different than your current platform, you can use electron-forge directly:

node_modules/.bin/electron-forge package --platform [win32|darwin|linux]

WSL2 Notes

Only relevant if running ElectronJS inside WSL2 enviroment

In WSL2 by default ElectronJS will run in Linux context which means it will use XWindows for rendering

To run ElectronJS as native Windows app inside WSL2, install with

npm install --platform=win32 electron

In which case, Chromium will not be able to initialize correctly, so use either flags:

• in-process-gpu:
  best for production
  allows for gpu acceleration, but disables access to inspector as rendering is in a single process
• no-sandbox:
  best for development
  disables gpu acceleration, but allows usage of inspector
  wasm support only, not support for webgl or webgpu