it looks like full node modules are bundled, rather than just the distribution files about desktop HOT 12 CLOSED

We should not assume end users will ever have node installed. The main use case I have for this kind of front-end interface is to get non-developers started with a ready-to-use single purpose GUI.

If there are things being bundled that are not used at all, of course it could be trimmed down to just what is required to run, but the bundle should be self contained and ready to roll without further downloading.

from desktop.

As @alerque said, the app should work in non-developer's environment. Just download and extract it.

If I could, of course I want to shrink its bundled size. However I'm not good at this topic. Would you tell me whether there is any way?

from desktop.

Yeah, removing them entirely is probably a bad idea, but most deps in node_modules don't need all the files they come with for your code to work (you don't need the tests and docs and all that if you're using them as actual code dependencies in a deployed project).

I would recommend using something like webpack, which despite having "web" in the name also comes with the ability to bundle "for node", so you can point it at the entry file for your application, and it'll generate a full bundle that acts as a node library that you can then write a trivial one-line application.js file with content require('./bundle') for, and then run as node application.js. Make webpack minify the bundle, and things get really nice.

from desktop.

Thanks, I'll check.

from desktop.

I tried webpack at 174988a.

Most of app's size is occupied by Electron itself. So the size won't be reduced by webpack.
However, the number of files decreases much. This is effective when extracting the archive.

from desktop.

interesting finding, how little of a difference does it make in terms of size?

from desktop.

On Windows 64bit:

from desktop.

interesting. Yeah that's not too much space saved (although 4mb on 52/48 is still considerable), but that's an amazing reduction in files. Out of curiosity, which zipper did you use? If the resources/app set went down by over 8mb, I'd imagine something like 7z should be able to reflect that in the packed size, too

from desktop.

v1.0.4 is released. It uses webpack.

from desktop.

you are a hero

from desktop.

btw, perhaps interesting to know, using 7z rather than plain zip for compression gives me a 31MB archive for 1.0.4 (set to best compression, since it's a release pack), rather than 51MB, so that's a drastic savings, too. Might be worth using 7z for future releases.

from desktop.

I know 7z can compress better than zip, however, it's not supported by os. So I will use only plain zip. Thanks.

from desktop.