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Kopia Desk uses electron-builder to package the Electron application into a standard Windows NSIS installer. The build process bundles only the files the application needs at runtime — main.js, preload.js, the lib/, renderer/, and assets/ directories — and excludes development artifacts such as test/, docs/, and the bulk of node_modules/ (Electron itself is re-bundled by electron-builder from its own cache).
electron-builder --win must run on Windows. Building a Windows NSIS installer on Linux or macOS requires Wine and additional tooling. For the simplest and most reliable experience, run the build command on a Windows machine.

​
Build Steps

1
Confirm your environment
2
Make sure you have completed the dev setup — Node.js ≥ 20 and npm install must have been run at least once so that electron-builder is present in node_modules/.bin/.
3
Run the build command
4
npm run build
5
This executes electron-builder --win, which:
6
  • Reads the "build" configuration from package.json
  • Downloads winCodeSign to the electron-builder cache (first run only)
  • Packages the listed source files into an Electron ASAR archive
  • Wraps the archive and the Electron runtime into an NSIS installer
    • 7
    Locate the output
    8
    The finished installer is written to the dist/ folder in the project root:
    9
    dist/
└── Kopia Desk Setup 1.0.0.exe   ← NSIS installer
    10
    Run the .exe to install Kopia Desk on any Windows machine.

    ​
    electron-builder Configuration

    The build is fully described by the "build" key in package.json — no separate electron-builder.yml file is needed: 
    "build": {
  "appId": "com.kopiadesk.app",
  "productName": "Kopia Desk",
  "win": {
    "target": "nsis",
    "icon": "assets/Kopia_Desk.png"
  },
  "files": [
    "main.js",
    "preload.js",
    "lib/**/*",
    "renderer/**/*",
    "assets/**/*"
  ]
}

    ​
    Bundled files

    Only the files listed under "files" are included in the installer:
    EntryWhat it includes
    main.jsElectron main process — IPC handlers, window creation, settings
    preload.jscontextBridge script that exposes window.kopiaAPI to the renderer
    lib/**/*lib/core.js — all scanning, hashing, journal, and drive logic
    renderer/**/*index.html, app.js, styles.css — the entire UI
    assets/**/*Kopia_Desk.png — application icon
    The test/, docs/, and node_modules/ directories (other than the Electron runtime managed by electron-builder itself) are not included in the installer.
    The application icon must be a PNG or ICO file. This project uses assets/Kopia_Desk.png. electron-builder converts it automatically for use as the installer and taskbar icon on Windows.

    ​
    Code-Signing Bypass

    By default, electron-builder attempts to sign the installer with a code-signing certificate. If you are building without a certificate (typical during development or internal testing), disable auto-discovery to avoid a build failure: 
    $env:CSC_IDENTITY_AUTO_DISCOVERY="false"; npm run build
    This sets the environment variable for the duration of the command only — your shell session is not permanently affected. On some Windows setups, electron-builder fails to extract winCodeSign because the extraction path contains symlinks that Windows does not permit. If the build fails with an error mentioning winCodeSign or symlinks, manually place the extracted directory in electron-builder’s cache:
    1. Download or extract winCodeSign manually.
    2. Copy the extracted directory to:
    %LOCALAPPDATA%\electron-builder\Cache\winCodeSign\winCodeSign-2.6.0\
    1. Re-run npm run build. electron-builder will find the cached directory and skip the download/extraction step.

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