electron-mksnapshot-example

What is this

A minimal electron setup in order to generate an application practically self-contained inside a snapshot. It is based on this blog post, but this example is simpler and updated to work on Electron 12, and uses mksnapshot.js instead of mksnapshot

• Electron 12
• OSX tested, WIN / LINUX may need to adjust the paths

Instructions:

Install deps

npm install

Generate Snapshot

Only snapshot-osx-intel is guaranteed to work. Rest of archs may have glitches in the paths, could not test them. Feel free to correct the script and create a PR.

Also, remember snapshot_blob.bin is also arch dependent although it is generated always with the same name AND has to have this name. So you will need appropriate magic on your publish scripts to install the specific arch binaries.

npm run snapshot-osx-intel
npm run snapshot-osx-arm64
npm run snapshot-win
npm run snapshot-linux

Run application

npm start

Also: Test that Snapshot Will work

This will print verbose errors in the JS file, after executing your code in a blank VM. It is useful to debug a snapshot that fails to boot.

./tool/test-snapshot.sh snapshot.src/index.js

Structure

• snapshot.src/

  • index.js
    • the snapshot file that will be compiled. This is executed on a totally blank V8 context, no windows, no nodejs, no dom .... You need to use closures and instance later from the real things.

• snapshot.out/

  • binary files will be generated here AND copied to node-modules/electron/dist.... You can delete this folder.

• stub/

  • A stub main and preloader that load all code from the snapshots

• html/

  • An HTML application that loads all code from the snapshot

Freeware

(C) 2021 Rodolfo Lopez / Nebular Streams Freeware

Thanks a lot to @jkleinsc for his comprehensive help to get this working.