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README.md

WordPress.com for Desktop

WordPress.com for Desktop is an Electron wrapper for Calypso, the WordPress.com front-end. It works on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Getting Started & Running Locally

The steps marked Production* can be omitted but should be taken when building the production version of the app.

  1. Clone the Calypso repository locally
  2. Install all root level dependencies with yarn
  3. Export the environment variables:
    • Production*: CONFIG_ENV (set to release)
    • Production*: CALYPSO_SECRETS_ENCRYPTION_KEY (it's a secret!)
  4. Production*: yarn run build-desktop:secrets
  5. Build the app with yarn run build
  6. Find the built apps in the desktop/release folder

To disable the auto-updater when testing locally, make sure to export the DEBUG environment variable and invoke the Electron binary directly. For example on Mac:

export DEBUG='*'
./desktop/release/mac/WordPress.com.app/Contents/MacOS/WordPress.com

Development Mode

For a quicker and more efficient development experience, the application can be run in "development mode", which executes the application code directly (i.e. without building the app). This development mode can be ran against production WordPress.com webapp, or a local instance of Calypso.

  • Use yarn run dev to run development mode and load production WordPress.com, OR
  • Boot Calpyso from the root of the Calypso repository with yarn start. Once Calypso is ready, the desktop app can be booted with yarn run dev:localhost to load the local instance of Calypso.

Development

Refer to the development guide for help with how the app works and how to change stuff.

Running The End-To-End Test Suite

  1. Set the environment variables E2EUSERNAME and E2EPASSWORD.
  2. Use yarn run test:e2e or make e2e to invoke the test suite.

To manually start each platform's pre-packaged executable used for end-to-end testing:

  • Mac: Double-click WordPress.com.app (extract with ditto)
  • Windows: Double-click WordPress.com.exe in win-unpacked directory
  • Linux: npx electron /path/to/linux-unpacked/resources/app

MacOS Notarization

Notes on MacOS notarization can be found here.

Building & Packaging a Release

While running the app locally in a development environment is great, you will eventually need to build a release version you can share.

Troubleshooting

If you have any problems running the app please see the most common issues.

License

WordPress.com for Desktop is licensed under GNU General Public License v2 (or later).