Tips for installing Electron
To install prebuilt Electron binaries, use npm
.
The preferred method is to install Electron as a development dependency in your
app:
npm install electron --save-dev
See the Electron versioning doc for info on how to manage Electron versions in your apps.
You can also install the electron
command globally in your $PATH
:
npm install electron -g
If you want to change the architecture that is downloaded (e.g., ia32
on an
x64
machine), you can use the --arch
flag with npm install or set the
npm_config_arch
environment variable:
npm install --arch=ia32 electron
In addition to changing the architecture, you can also specify the platform
(e.g., win32
, linux
, etc.) using the --platform
flag:
npm install --platform=win32 electron
If you need to use an HTTP proxy you can set these environment variables.
When running npm install electron
, some users occasionally encounter
installation errors.
In almost all cases, these errors are the result of network problems and not
actual issues with the electron
npm package. Errors like ELIFECYCLE
,
EAI_AGAIN
, ECONNRESET
, and ETIMEDOUT
are all indications of such
network problems. The best resolution is to try switching networks, or
just wait a bit and try installing again.
You can also attempt to download Electron directly from
electron/electron/releases
if installing via npm
is failing.
If installation fails with an EACCESS
error you may need to
fix your npm permissions.
If the above error persists, the unsafe-perm flag may need to be set to true:
sudo npm install electron --unsafe-perm=true
On slower networks, it may be advisable to use the --verbose
flag in order to show download progress:
npm install --verbose electron
If you need to force a re-download of the asset and the SHASUM file set the
force_no_cache
enviroment variable to true
.