Contribute to the Mattermost Desktop App

The Mattermost Desktop App is an Electron wrapper around the web app project. It lives in the mattermost/desktop repository. The desktop app runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Electron 

The Desktop App, like all Electron apps, is broken into two pieces: the main process and the renderer process.

The main process is a NodeJS process that has access to operating system functions, and governs the creation and management of several renderer processes.
The renderer processes are Chromium instances that perform different functions. In our app, each Mattermost server is its own renderer process.

In order to facilitate communication between the two processes, there’s a communication layer in which information can be sent between. We expose ONLY the communication API to the renderer process so that we don’t allow any malicious server to wreak havoc on a user’s computer.

You can read more about the Process Model here.

Directory Structure 

The directory structure is broken down into a few pieces to best organize the code:

Mattermost Desktop
├── docs/ - Documentation for working on the Desktop App
├── e2e/ - E2E tests
│   ├── modules/ - Setup code for the E2E tests
│   └── specs/ - E2E tests themselves
├── resources/ - Assets such as images or sound files that the Desktop App uses
├── scripts/ - Automated scripts used for building or packaging the Desktop App
└── src/ - Application source code
    ├── assets/ - Assets such as images or sound files that the Desktop App uses
    ├── common/ - Common objects and utility functions that aren't specifically tied to Electron
    ├── main/ - The majority of the main process code, including setup for the Electron app
    ├── renderer/ - The web code for all of the main application wrapper, modals. and server dropdown views that are used by the renderer process
    └── types/ - Common types for use between all of the individual modules

Desktop App Contributor Resources 

• GitHub Repository - Get the code, report issues, or submit PRs.
• Help Wanted - This is a good place to start if you’re looking for a way to contribute code. Many issues are labeled by difficulty level to make it easier to find ways to get involved.
• Developer Setup - Setup your development environment to start work on the desktop app.
• Build and CLI Commands - Useful commands to help build, debug, test, and modify the desktop app on your local machine.
• Debugging - Identify issues in the desktop app and debug the rendering process.
• Dependencies - Information about including dependencies in the desktop app.
• Style and Code Quality - Information about linting, type checking, and submitting great PRs
• Automated Testing - Find out how we incorporate unit and end-to-end testing into the desktop app development process.
• Packaging for Release - Build and package the app into a distributable version.
• General Contributor Guidelines - Everything you need to know about contributing code to Mattermost.

Where to Get Help 

If you have any questions related to development of the Desktop App, you can ask us in the Developers: Desktop App channel on our community Mattermost. If you need help deploying, administering, or using Mattermost, refer to our Get Help guide to find all of the resources that are availalbe to support your journey.