title: R shiny standalone application using Photon
body: <p>I am looking for an easy way to create a standalone application from a Shiny App. I first saw '<em>Shiny meets electron</em>' talk by Katie (see Google). After going through their website, I think Photon is their latest method!</p>
  <p>I tried to test Photon in it's simplest way but did not succeed.</p>
  <pre><code>To test Photon, I did the following:
  
  1. install node.js (works, tested 'npm' in CMD line, recognised)
  
  2. install git (works, tested 'git' in CMD line, recognised)
  
  3. install Photon using your instructions
  
  4. Open new basic shinyApplications: RStudio &gt; File &gt; New file &gt; Shiny Web App... &gt;&gt;
  --&gt; Name 'PhotonTestApp'
  --&gt; multiple fFIle (ui.R/server.R)
  --&gt; C:/ShinyApps
  Tested to see the app works, the basic Geyser data app.
  
  5. setwd(&quot;C:\ShinyApps\PhotonTestApp\&quot;)
  
  6. Launch Photon app builder
  --&gt; Shiny App Directory: C:/ShinyApps/temp
  --&gt; left default NULL in all three package inputs
  --&gt; Build
  </code></pre>
  <p>I get the following error:</p>
  <pre><code>&gt; photon:::photon_rstudioaddin()
  Listening on http://127.0.0.1:3898
  [1] &quot;Selected directory: &quot;
  [1] &quot;Selected directory: C:/ShinyApps/temp&quot;
  Running Photon
  Warning in normalizePath(path.expand(path), winslash, mustWork) :
  path[1]=&quot;C:\ShinyApps\temp/electron-quick-start&quot;: The system cannot find the file specified
  </code></pre>
  <p>I see that a directory was created: C:\ShinyApps\temp\electron-quick-start\ with a hidden .git directory which is empty.</p>
  <p>Some additional info:</p>
  <pre><code>sessionInfo()
  R version 3.6.3 (2020-02-29)
  Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
  Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 18362)
  
  Matrix products: default
  
  locale:
  [1] LC_COLLATE=English_Australia.1252 LC_CTYPE=English_Australia.1252 
  LC_MONETARY=English_Australia.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
  [5] LC_TIME=English_Australia.1252
  
  attached base packages:
  [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
  
  other attached packages:
  [1] shiny_1.5.0
  
  loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
  [1] Rcpp_1.0.5 rstudioapi_0.11 magrittr_1.5 xtable_1.8-4 R6_2.4.1 rlang_0.4.7 fastmap_1.0.1 stringr_1.4.0 tools_3.6.3
  [10] photon_0.0.1 miniUI_0.1.1.1 withr_2.2.0 htmltools_0.5.0 shinyFiles_0.8.0 ellipsis_0.3.1 digest_0.6.25 tibble_3.0.3 lifecycle_0.2.0
  [19] crayon_1.3.4 later_1.1.0.1 vctrs_0.3.2 promises_1.1.1 fs_1.4.2 rsconnect_0.8.16 glue_1.4.1 mime_0.9 stringi_1.4.6
  [28] compiler_3.6.3 pillar_1.4.6 shinyBS_0.61 jsonlite_1.7.0 httpuv_1.5.4 pkgconfig_2.0.3
  </code></pre>