fix: prevent unwanted files getting into app.asar

[ianshade]

About the Contributor

This pull request is posted on behalf of TV 2 Norge

Type of Contribution

This is a:

Build configuration fix

Current Behavior

app.asar contained binaries and other files that it should never contain, because the electron-builder output dir was shared with where the built app code goes (dist)

New Behavior

this change cuts down the installer and installed app size each by about half (at least on Windows), by changing the output directory for electron to release

Testing Instructions

Other Information

Status

• PR is ready to be reviewed.
• The functionality has been tested by the author.
• Relevant unit tests has been added / updated.
• Relevant documentation (code comments, system documentation) has been added / updated.

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: 04d1ec94-8827-4a4f-8cfd-af3435cdab01

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between f25f931 and c51a847.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• .gitignore
• package.json

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Walkthrough

This PR configures Electron Builder to output build artifacts to a release directory at the repository root, and adds that directory to .gitignore to prevent build outputs from being tracked in version control.

Changes

Build output directory configuration

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Electron Builder output and gitignore configuration package.json, .gitignore	Electron Builder build.directories.output is set to "release" in the build configuration, and the release directory is added to .gitignore.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 1 (Trivial) | ⏱️ ~3 minutes

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title directly describes the main objective of the changeset: preventing unwanted files from being included in app.asar through build configuration changes.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description is clearly related to the changeset, explaining the current behavior (shared output directory causing bloat), the new behavior (separate release directory), and expected benefits.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

_{✏️ Tip: You can configure your own custom pre-merge checks in the settings.}

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch fix/build-size

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