electron builder app size is too large

7
votes

I find that the MyApp.exe file generated using electron-builder is nearly about 500M. I am not sure what I did because previously, just for ia32 or x64, it would be around 196M. I also looked at this link and it mentions only about 55MB-60MB. So the question is, why am I getting such large sizes for my exe files? My app itself is very small and if electron is only around 33MB, what's all that extra space there?

Here are my package.json entries:

"build": {
"appId": "com.electron.myApp",
"publish": [
  {
    "provider": "generic",
    "url": "https://myAppServer"
  }
],
"win": {
  "target": [
    {
      "target": "nsis",
      "arch": [
        "ia32"
      ]
    }
  ]
},
"asar": false,
"nsis": {
  "oneClick": true,
  "perMachine": false,
  "artifactName": "${productName}-Setup-${version}.${ext}"

}    
"devDependencies": {
 "electron": "^1.7.9",
 "electron-installer-windows": "^0.2.0",
 "electron-builder": "^19.45.5",
 "electron-packager": "^8.5.2",
 "electron-winstaller": "^2.5.2",
 "grunt-electron-installer": "^2.1.0"
},
"dependencies": {
 "auto-launch": "^5.0.1",
 "cron": "^1.2.1",
 "electron-config": "^0.2.1",
 "electron-positioner": "^3.0.0",
 "electron-squirrel-startup": "^1.0.0",
 "electron-window": "^0.8.1",
 "electron-updater": "^2.16.1",
 "fs": "^0.0.1",
 "homedir": "^0.6.0",
 "https": "^1.0.0",
 "https-proxy-agent": "^1.0.0",
 "line-by-line": "^0.1.5",
 "pac-proxy-agent": "^1.0.0",
 "url": "^0.11.0",
 "winreg": "^1.2.3",
 "xml2js": "^0.4.17"
} 
}

Is this the expected size of an electron app? Any way to make this smaller?

Regards, Arun

1
electronelectron-builderelectron-packager
I think @MertSimsek's answer is correct since right now your packaging everything in your devDependencies which are all big packages - Joshua
I figured out what the issue was. I had an Output directory within my electron root directory where I was storing my final MSI files. It was packaging that directory as well as a result of which the size kept growing. - Arun Krishnan
After rebuilding, my application now comes to 39MB which is way better :-) - Arun Krishnan
@ArunKrishnan how did you change output folder? - msdos
You can change that in the package.json file. ` "scripts": { "build": "electron-packager . <package name> --platform win32 --arch x64 --out <Build directory name> ` This should work. Also, before any new build, ensure your build directory is clean. That way you will be guaranteed to not have older versions also bundled up. - Arun Krishnan

1 Answers

10
votes

You can try npm prune --production but even the most minimal Electron application is going to be around 100MB.