Source Code Directory Structure
The source code of Electron is separated into a few parts, mostly following Chromium on the separation conventions.
You may need to become familiar with Chromium's multi-process architecture to understand the source code better.
Structure of Source Code
Electron
├──atom - Source code of Electron.
| ├── app - System entry code.
| ├── browser - The frontend including the main window, UI, and all of the
| | main process things. This talks to the renderer to manage web pages.
| | ├── lib - Javascript part of the main process initialization code.
| | ├── ui - Implementation of UI stuff for different platforms.
| | | ├── cocoa - Cocoa specific source code.
| | | ├── gtk - GTK+ specific source code.
| | | └── win - Windows GUI specific source code.
| | ├── default_app - The default page to show when Electron is started
| | | without providing an app.
| | ├── api - The implementation of the main process APIs.
| | | └── lib - Javascript part of the API implementation.
| | ├── net - Network related code.
| | ├── mac - Mac specific Objective-C source code.
| | └── resources - Icons, platform-dependent files, etc.
| ├── renderer - Code that runs in renderer process.
| | ├── lib - Javascript part of renderer initialization code.
| | └── api - The implementation of renderer process APIs.
| | └── lib - Javascript part of the API implementation.
| └── common - Code that used by both the main and renderer processes,
| including some utility functions and code to integrate node's message
| loop into Chromium's message loop.
| ├── lib - Common Javascript initialization code.
| └── api - The implementation of common APIs, and foundations of
| Electron's built-in modules.
| └── lib - Javascript part of the API implementation.
├── chromium_src - Source code that copied from Chromium.
├── docs - Documentations.
├── spec - Automatic tests.
├── atom.gyp - Building rules of Electron.
└── common.gypi - Compiler specific settings and building rules for other
components like `node` and `breakpad`.
Structure of Other Directories
- script - Scripts used for development purpose like building, packaging, testing, etc.
- tools - Helper scripts used by gyp files, unlike
script
, scripts put here should never be invoked by users directly. - vendor - Source code of third party dependencies, we didn't use
third_party
as name because it would confuse it with the same directory in Chromium's source code tree. - node_modules - Third party node modules used for building.
- out - Temporary output directory of
ninja
. - dist - Temporary directory created by
script/create-dist.py
script when creating an distribution. - external_binaries - Downloaded binaries of third-party frameworks which
do not support building with
gyp
.