How to use ignore files when packaging

electron-builder: 3.16.0

I have a project setup using the two package.json structure. Everything works fine now, but I need to dynamically ignore files from the package. To do this, I am switching from the CLI to the API.

My current build command is:

build --arch ia32 --platform win32 -d

I have changed it to the following script:

'use strict';

const builder = require('electron-builder');

const opts = {
    platform: [builder.Platform.WINDOWS],
    arch: 'ia32',
    dist: true,
    devMetadata: {
        build: {
            win: {
                ignore: function (file) {
                    // TODO: add logic here
                    console.log(file);
                    return false;
                }
            }
        }
    }
};

builder.build(opts)
    .catch((err) => {
        console.log(err);
        process.exit(1);
    });

However, the ignore field is not being read; all files are packaged and all the filenames are not being printed. Any idea on why this is?

[singhshashi]

Just leaving a comment here for anyone else who lands up searching for how to ignore files. You do that using the files configuration https://www.electron.build/configuration/contents#files.

e.g.

"build": {
    "appId": "com.gettrici",
    "productName": "Trici",
    "mac": {
      "category": "public.app-category.developer-tools",
      "icon": "resources/images/trici_icon.icns",
      "target": "zip",
      "asar": false,
      "compression": "store",
      "files":["!builds/*","!patches/*","!packages/*"]
    }
  },

It was not immediately clear to me from the documentation how to ignore files.

[farfromrefug]

Ok so i dropped by app size by around 80% just using the ignore function on the node_modules directory:

function(filePath) {
                    if (/node_modules/.test(filePath)) {
                        if (/\/(obj|test.*?|spec.*?|htdocs|demo|dist|example.*?|sample.*?)[\/$]/i.test(filePath)) {
                            return true;
                        }
                        if (/^(\..*|.*\.(sln|pdb|exp|lib|map|md|sh|gypi|gyp|h|cpp|xml|yml|html)|vcxproj.*|LICENSE|README|CONTRIBUTORS|vagrant|Dockerfile|Makefile)$/i.test(path.basename(filePath))) {
                            return true;
                        }
                    }

                    // console.log(filePath);
                };

Could really use glob for this. keep in mind that some should not be ignore in some app cases (html, xml,…)