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[desktop] Basic electron app
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Authored by michal on Nov 15 2022, 12:00 AM.
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Details

Summary

This diff adds a basic desktop app setup.

  • it's contained in the desktop workspace
  • desktop/pages contains code for the splash/ loading window and connection error window
  • desktop/forge.config.js is a configuration for electron-forge whish is a packaging helper
Test Plan
  • Run yarn dev in keyserver and web. Run yarn dev in desktop and check if it works in developement
  • Run yarn make and check if resulting executable works with production server

Look for any differences with the web browser version.

Diff Detail

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Event Timeline

There are a very large number of changes, so older changes are hidden. Show Older Changes
desktop/main.js
39 ↗(On Diff #18422)

It makes it so we don't create another electron window when a user clicks a link (the link is opened in the external browser with the use of shell.openExternal(url);).

Responded to some of the review, left comments for the rest

ashoat requested changes to this revision.Nov 16 2022, 7:41 PM
  • I think it's important to have Flow / ESM support in desktop, and Webpack sounds like the way to do it. Can you create a task and link here before landing?
  • I'm okay with sequencing that after landing this diff. We should prioritize the monthly goal... ideally we get Webpack working before the end of the month, but if not I'd rather have the app shipped without Webpack than not shipped
desktop/main.js
30 ↗(On Diff #18481)

openURL, please try to match conventions in the codebase

1–2 ↗(On Diff #18422)

Why can't we suffix with .cjs though?

19 ↗(On Diff #18422)

If we were using Webpack we could load it using CSS modules

32 ↗(On Diff #18422)

The line does not appear to have been removed

39 ↗(On Diff #18422)

Please add a code comment explaining

87 ↗(On Diff #18422)

Don't think this was addressed

185–186 ↗(On Diff #18422)

@michal can you ping @atul to get him to respond here?

docs/dev_environment.md
643 ↗(On Diff #18481)

Please match existing conventions. We don't say "And" here, we say "Next, open a new terminal and run:" in other sections. These docs have extremely high standards of review and you will save everybody some time if you pay deep attention

657 ↗(On Diff #18481)

Tons of typos here...

This revision now requires changes to proceed.Nov 16 2022, 7:41 PM

Rename to .cjs, documentation changes and other fixes

Here's the linear webpack issue, I'm going to focus on it whenever I have the time.

Also, @atul do you know why keyserver CI is failing on my desktop diffs? I've tried cloning a fresh repo and running yarn cleaninstall but I don't have any issues locally.

desktop/main.js
1–2 ↗(On Diff #18422)

Sorry, I forgot to address this comment in particular. There's no problem with this if we decide to keep CJS for now, so I'm going to rename the files!

19 ↗(On Diff #18422)

I'm going to mention this in the issue.

32 ↗(On Diff #18422)

Sorry, I must have missed it, thank you for noticing

87 ↗(On Diff #18422)

Yes, sorry, I was waiting for the decision, in the other inline comments, about removing the second use of show.

185–186 ↗(On Diff #18422)

@atul what do you think?

desktop/package.json
6 ↗(On Diff #18422)

Added "type": "commonjs"

ashoat requested changes to this revision.Nov 17 2022, 10:00 AM

Keyserver build will work if you add a COPY line here for your new workspace. Otherwise looks great!

This revision now requires changes to proceed.Nov 17 2022, 10:00 AM

Setting @atul to blocking so he responds to the question in the inline comment (not the CI question, that one has been resolved)

Setting @atul to blocking so he responds to the question in the inline comment (not the CI question, that one has been resolved)

Sorry, literally just saw the comments tagging me

desktop/main.js
185–186 ↗(On Diff #18422)

Yeah I think we should "keep the app running" since that's the behavior I'd except on macOS.

My understanding is:
Red close button in top left corner = close window
CMD - Q or right-click "Quit" = close application

desktop/main.js
185–186 ↗(On Diff #18422)

But doesn't that behavior only apply to apps that support multiple windows? Eg. consider the Settings app, which closes when you close the window.

desktop/main.js
185–186 ↗(On Diff #18422)

On the other hand, Slack and the Calendar app also don't quit when you close their windows.

desktop/main.js
185–186 ↗(On Diff #18422)

Maybe?

Not sure if these are all "single window" applications but sample of Apple first-party

Calendar -> remains open
News -> remains open
Maps -> remains open

Dictionary -> application closes
Settings -> application closes
Reminders -> application closes

So loosely it seems like "utility" applications close when the close button is hit?


Worth noting that Messages and Discord stay open when the close button is hit, so feels safe to match their behavior.

I don't feel strongly, but my intuition is that leaving the application running would be more inline with what I'd expect.

Okay fair, thanks for the research @atul. At this point the only thing I'm waiting on is the fix to the keyserver build and we should be ready to go!

ashoat requested changes to this revision.Nov 17 2022, 1:03 PM
ashoat added inline comments.
keyserver/Dockerfile
25–36 ↗(On Diff #18548)

Why did you touch this?

This revision now requires changes to proceed.Nov 17 2022, 1:03 PM

Revert formatting. Sorry, I have format-on-save enabled so the changes were made automatically, but I should have noticed that.

desktop/main.js
184–186 ↗(On Diff #18422)

Looks like this is covered in the Electron docs:

a9f2c7.png (1×1 px, 289 KB)

atul added a subscriber: jon.

Left some minor nits/questions/suggestions, but nothing pressing.

(Doesn't matter a whole lot, but what do you think about renaming the desktop directory to electron?)

desktop/main.cjs
6 ↗(On Diff #18549)

CC @ashoat @jon

Are we going to have to change this to localhost:3000/comm/ for those on Nix? Would be good to get everyone using port 3000 across the board regardless of mainline/nix dev environment to surface these issues ASAP + keep things consistent

14–61 ↗(On Diff #18549)

This is a little hard to read (at least for me) with all the levels of indentation. Thoughts on pulling some of these "chunks" out into their own variables?

63–92 ↗(On Diff #18549)

For future diffs it would be super helpful to attach some screenshots to Summary/Test Plan/etc to show reviewers how things look


Another thing that would be "nice to have" for future diffs are links to the relevant docs. Especially for Electron because I think we can assume most reviewers aren't super familiar with the API (I might be wrong with that assumption though)

68–69 ↗(On Diff #18549)

Would be helpful to have some sort of screenshot or visual to show how the app looks at these minimum dimensions

71 ↗(On Diff #18549)

Are these the default values for trafficLightPosition?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd assume we only need to specify the trafficLightPosition if we're overriding the defaults?

72 ↗(On Diff #18549)

Super minor nit, but we usually capitalize hex values so it'd look something like

backgroundColor: '#0A0A0A'
73–75 ↗(On Diff #18549)

I've noticed a lot of Electron apps (eg VS Code, Linear, etc) leave the Developer Tools thing in the menu even on "prod"... maybe we could keep them around as well? Might be helpful at some point when debugging and doesn't seem like it'd hurt? (Discord does not leave them in)

desktop/pages/error.html
13 ↗(On Diff #18549)

We usually capitalize hex values in the codebase so this would be something like:

<meta name="theme-color" content="#B91D47" />
desktop/pages/splash.html
13 ↗(On Diff #18549)

We usually capitalize hex values in the codebase so this would be something like:

<meta name="theme-color" content="#B91D47" />
desktop/pages/style.css
6 ↗(On Diff #18549)

Can we pull hex values from web/theme.css?

Noticed we're able to pull the var(--font-stack) CSS variable... can we pull CSS variables from theme.css as well? Feel free to disregard if it's not possible or I'm missing context on something

desktop/main.cjs
6 ↗(On Diff #18549)

Yup, the goal is to get everybody off of Apache. We have a detailed plan in ENG-2260

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.Nov 18 2022, 5:57 AM
michal added 1 blocking reviewer(s): atul.
michal added inline comments.
desktop/main.cjs
63–92 ↗(On Diff #18549)

That's fair, I should have at least linked to the issue on Linear with pictures.

68–69 ↗(On Diff #18549)

image.png (1×2 px, 214 KB)
We could probably make the minimum a bit smaller but it's starting to look weird.

71 ↗(On Diff #18549)

We have titleBarStyle: 'hidden' so by default it looks like this:

image.png (354×590 px, 23 KB)
I have moved them closer to the middle.

73–75 ↗(On Diff #18549)

Sure

desktop/pages/style.css
6 ↗(On Diff #18549)

This is the color for the dark blue that the Comm logo has in the background. It doesn't have a css variable in theme.css. Maybe I could add it as --logo-bg and use it here?

Resigning since I accepted already and the re-request review seems targetted at @atul

Looks good! Accepting to unblock but let's add the --logo-bg CSS variable before landing

desktop/pages/style.css
6 ↗(On Diff #18549)

I think that makes sense!

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.Nov 21 2022, 3:16 PM

Add --logo-bg css variable.