Building & Publishing

Finished creating your Lightrail track, and ready to distribute it to the world? Here's how you can get other Lightrail users up and running with your new track.

Distribution Format

Lightrail tracks are distributed as zip files. New tracks can be installed by providing Lightrail with the URL of a track's zip file (in the "Install from URL" input box on the Tracks pane). The zip file can be generated manually, or via Github Actions for an automated deployment workflow.

To generate an installable zipfile for your track manually, simply run npm run build to build the final bundled JS for your track, then create a zip-file containing the track-dist directory as well as the package.json file from your track. This zip-file can be hosted on any file-hosting service (S3, Github, etc) and made available for downloads/installs.

To automate this with Github Actions, use the workflow here (opens in a new tab) in your track repository. To see sample usage, check Lightrail's own track release workflow for first-party tracks here (opens in a new tab)

The Lightrail Track Repository

Tracks can also be added to the Lightrail Track Repository, which will make them installable with one click from the Lightrail UX. To add a track to the Repository, just make a PR in the lightrail GitHub repo (opens in a new tab) that edits track-repository.json (opens in a new tab) to add a new entry containing your track's name and zip file URL. Make sure the name doesn't conflict with anything already in the repository! PRs will be approved/rejected within 48 hours.