Build Instructions (Windows)

Follow the guidelines below for building Electron on Windows.

Prerequisites

• Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2 or higher
• Visual Studio 2017 - download VS 2017 Community Edition for free
• Python 2.7
• Node.js
• Git
• Debugging Tools for Windows if you plan on creating a full distribution since symstore.exe is used for creating a symbol store from .pdb files.

If you don't currently have a Windows installation, dev.microsoftedge.com has timebombed versions of Windows that you can use to build Electron.

Building Electron is done entirely with command-line scripts and cannot be done with Visual Studio. You can develop Electron with any editor but support for building with Visual Studio will come in the future.

Note: Even though Visual Studio is not used for building, it's still required because we need the build toolchains it provides.

Getting the Code

$ git clone https://github.com/electron/electron.git

Bootstrapping

The bootstrap script will download all necessary build dependencies and create the build project files. Notice that we're using ninja to build Electron so there is no Visual Studio project generated.

$ cd electron
  $ python script\bootstrap.py -v

Building

Build both Release and Debug targets:

$ python script\build.py

You can also only build the Debug target:

$ python script\build.py -c D

After building is done, you can find electron.exe under out\D (debug target) or under out\R (release target).

32bit Build

To build for the 32bit target, you need to pass --target_arch=ia32 when running the bootstrap script:

$ python script\bootstrap.py -v --target_arch=ia32

The other building steps are exactly the same.

Visual Studio project

To generate a Visual Studio project, you can pass the --msvs parameter:

$ python script\bootstrap.py --msvs

Cleaning

To clean the build files:

$ npm run clean

To clean only out and dist directories:

$ npm run clean-build

Note: Both clean commands require running bootstrap again before building.

Tests

See Build System Overview: Tests

Troubleshooting

Command xxxx not found

If you encountered an error like Command xxxx not found, you may try to use the VS2015 Command Prompt console to execute the build scripts.

Fatal internal compiler error: C1001

Make sure you have the latest Visual Studio update installed.

Assertion failed: ((handle))->activecnt >= 0

If building under Cygwin, you may see bootstrap.py failed with following error:

Assertion failed: ((handle))->activecnt >= 0, file src\win\pipe.c, line 1430
  
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "script/bootstrap.py", line 87, in <module>
      sys.exit(main())
    File "script/bootstrap.py", line 22, in main
      update_node_modules('.')
    File "script/bootstrap.py", line 56, in update_node_modules
      execute([NPM, 'install'])
    File "/home/zcbenz/codes/raven/script/lib/util.py", line 118, in execute
      raise e
  subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['npm.cmd', 'install']' returned non-zero exit status 3

This is caused by a bug when using Cygwin Python and Win32 Node together. The solution is to use the Win32 Python to execute the bootstrap script (assuming you have installed Python under C:\Python27):

$ /cygdrive/c/Python27/python.exe script/bootstrap.py

LNK1181: cannot open input file 'kernel32.lib'

Try reinstalling 32bit Node.js.

Error: ENOENT, stat 'C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\npm'

Simply making that directory should fix the problem:

$ mkdir ~\AppData\Roaming\npm

node-gyp is not recognized as an internal or external command

You may get this error if you are using Git Bash for building, you should use PowerShell or VS2015 Command Prompt instead.