Zen Electron App

About

This codebase contains the Electron 'shell' that houses the Zen web app. It enables this web app to be packaged up as a desktop app for Mac OS, Linux and Windows.

It is an installation of the Electron-Forge project - an all-in-one tool for packaging and distributing Electron applications. For more information, see the Electron-Forge docs.

The web app that this 'shell' houses, as well as information on how to actively work on it, can be found here.

Installation

Head to Releases and download the correct asset for your platform.

• arm64 is Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3 chips)
• x64 is Apple Intel

Unzip the download package and open the app.

This is not a commercial application, which means we don't send it off to Apple to code sign or notarise. After downloading the app, you may not be able to open it due to missing permissions. Approve the app using the following steps:

• On older MacOSs, go to System Preferences > Security and Privacy and give approval
• On newer MacOSs, in a terminal, run xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/app, e.g. xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/Zen.app

Development

Local Development

To install packages, run:

• nvm use - switches to correct version of Node
• yarn - installs Node packages (dependencies) You can develop this application and the web application concurrently.
• Spin up local version of web app
• http://localhost:5173 to view the web application
• yarn start or npm run start to view the desktop application

Building Distributables

Electron-Forge docs

• In the web app repo, change the svelte adaptor to @ptkdev/sveltekit-electron-adapter
• In the web app repo, run yarn build or npm run build to generate a bundled version of the html, css and js files
• Clear the contents of src/app in this repo
• Copy the contents of the build/ folder in the web app repo into src/app in this repo
• yarn make or npm run make to package up the distributable for the platform you are currently working on

MacOS

• yarn make --arch=arm64,x64 or npm run make --arch=arm64,x64 to package up distributables for both Apple Intel and Apple Silicon chips

Windows

Linux

Publishing Distributables

To publish distributables, you must have write access to this Github repo.

• Generate a personal access token with write access
• Create .env file at the root of this project and token into GITHUB_TOKEN variable
• Increment the version number in package.json
• yarn run publish to publish the distributable for the platform you are currently working on
• yarn run publish --arch=arm64,x64 to publish distributables for both Apple Intel and Apple Silicon chips

Releases are available here.