Developer Setup

Prerequisites 

• C++ environment which supports C++11 (e.g. VS 2015, Xcode, GCC)
• Python 2.7
• Node.js 8 or later
• NPM
• Git
• Windows Build Tools or Visual Studio Community edition (see Known Problems section).
• Recommended: Chocolatey which we will use to install other dependencies.

Windows 

The recommended way to install the required components on Windows is to install the Chocolatey package manager. Once it’s installed, run the following commands in the PowerShell console as administrator.

choco install nvm

choco install git

If you’re using PowerShell without privileged access, run:

nvm install 10.18.1

Installing Dependencies 

When installation is complete, dependencies of the src/ directory are also installed.

OSX & Linux 

$ npm install

Windows 

Run the following command in the PowerShell console as administrator.

> .\scripts\Makefile.ps1 Install-Deps

Known Problems 

Policy 

If the above command fails, it might be due to not having the right policy to install. You can temporarily change the policy using:

> Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force;

pngquant-bin 

On Windows there is no default libpng-dev available. There are two options for getting it to build:

• Install Windows Build Tools: npm install windows-build-tools
• Install Visual Studio Community

Either option provides the dependencies required to build the package. After one of the two options are installed, install npm install libpng-dev manually.

Building 

Build JavaScript codes with webpack.

$ npm run build

After building is done, you can execute the application with npm start.

Packaging 

Package specific files of src/ directory as distributable formats with electron-builder. Files are defined in electron-builder.json. Packages will be generated into release/ directory.

macOS and Linux 

$ npm run package:<all | mac | linux>

Windows 

> .\scripts\Windows.ps1

Dependencies 

Need to install some software required by electron-builder to build packages. Please see electron-builder wiki for detailed description.

• Windows: Nothing.
• macOS: brew install gnu-tar
• Linux (64 bit): icnsutils, graphicsmagick and xz-utils if Ubuntu is used.

Code signing 

Set environment variables to build trusted packages. Please see electron-builder wiki for detailed description.

Tests 

Execute automated tests.

$ npm test

There are two steps in npm test.

Test functionality:

$ npm run test:app

Test coding style:

$ npm run lint:js

Helper commands 

npm run watch 

Reload the application automatically when you have saved source codes. When using this mode, you can use “React Developer Tools” in the Developer Tools window.

Directory Structure 

Mattermost Desktop
├── docs/ - Documentations.
├── resources/ - Resources which are used outside of the application codes, and original images of assets.
├── scripts/ - Helper scripts.
├── src/ - Application source code.
│   ├── assets/ - Assets which are loaded from the application codes.
│   ├── browser/ - Implementation of Electron's renderer process.
│   │   ├── components/ - React.js components.
│   │   ├── css/ - Stylesheets.
│   │   ├── js/ - Helper JavaScript modules.
│   │   └── webview/ - Injection code for Electron's <webview> tag.
│   ├── common/ - Common JavaScript modules for both Electron's processes.
│   └── main/ - Implementation of Electron's main process.
│       └── menus/ - Application menu.
└── test/ - Automated tests.
    ├── modules/ - Scripts which are commonly used in tests.
    └── specs/ - Test scripts.

Other directories 

• node_modules/ - Third party Node.js modules to develop and build the application.
• release/ - Packaged distributable applications.
• src/node_modules/ - Third party Node.js modules to use in the application.