How to install a 3rd party software with electron?

Question

How to install a 3rd party software along with installing of electron app?

My example use case is, I want to use ffmpeg inside my electron app, which is supposed to take screenshot from a video. It can be any other software.

Can I package the app in such a way that the user have to install only my app. And my app is installing ffmpeg for the user without any manual action.

I would like to automate the process of installing ffmpeg during the electron app install on different OSs, if possible.

Answer 1

Just bundle ffmpeg using extraFiles option.

Answer 2

My app has specific drivers which are different for each platform. In my package json I have:

"extraFiles": [
  {
    "from": "resources/${os}/drivers",
    "to": "resources",
    "filter": [
      "**/*"
    ]
  }
],

This ensures that it gets the correct resources for the platform I'm building and copies them into the built app resources directory. Check out the docs. Both ${os} and ${arch} work in these fields.