File size concern

[mattdesl]

This is a general concern that I've felt since building hihat and using it as a local dependency across multiple modules/projects. It feels pretty "dirty" to bring in a 100+ mb dependency just to add smoke tests for WebGL or what have you.

I don't see any clean/easy fix, and Electron file size is going to continue to grow as Chromium does too.

Feel free to brainstorm...

[shama]

npm-execspawn will try a globally installed bin if a local doesn't exist.

One idea is to create an if-electron package. Upon install, it will check if a global electron exists. If it doesn't, such as with someone unacquainted, it will install electron-prebuilt locally. Otherwise it will do nothing to fallback to the global.

This way CI servers can also be configured to install electron globally and cache the global folder.

[zeke]

Related: https://github.com/atom/electron/issues/673

[mattdesl]

@shama Yeah that would be interesting to explore for sure. :+1:

[vladikoff]

@shama another approach: How about install electron-prebuilt only if devtool was started via https://github.com/mattdesl/install-if-needed (lol Matt also made that one).