How should i exclude all node_modules in electron-packager

Question

I'm using electron-packager for creating an electron.exe of my app. I need to exclude all node modules . I tried the following

--ignore=node_modules

The above is not working. Any idea how to exclude all folders/ remove node modules in final build.

Sight

I recommend using either electron-forge npmjs.com/package/electron-forge or electron-builder github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder to make your life easy. Unless you have a very special use case those packages will make things easier and faster. – Guessrope

I highly discourage the use of electron-forge because the dependencies to electron-compile and electron-packer. Both are very flawed especially electron-compile (outated transpilers, flawed path handling for scss and the list goes on). electron-builder on the other hand is the right tool, it will exclude all devDependencies from the "release" node modules. – Udall

electron-forge uses electron-packager to do its packaging anyway – Wolframite

Answer 1

If you install modules as devDependencies, they will all be pruned automatically before packaging.

If you're using electron-builder you can define glob patterns as files in the config. In this case !**/node_modules/* will exclude all of node_modules.

If you're using electron-packager you can use the ignore option and regular expression to exclude files.

Wolframite

I had to use !node_modules/**/*. – Nonah