SETUP_NOTES.md

Setup for Publishing the Native Apps

We are going to publish releases to the messenger-issues repo. It will support auto updates as well.

First, set up a personal access token for an account that has access to push to the above repo. It must have the repo permission.

You will need to set this to an environment variable and make it accessible from sudo:

1. nano ~/.bash_profile and add export GH_TOKEN=<your-token>
2. sudo visudo and add the Defaults env_keep += "GH_TOKEN" line

You will need to set up a signing certificate for Mac. I have used my MacOS developer certs.

Instructions on generating a cert are here.

To set up the Windows code signing cert, we will need to add two more sudo enabled environment variables:

1. export WIN_CSC_LINK=<cert>.p12
2. export WIN_CSC_KEY_PASSWORD=<cert-password>
3. Add them to the visudo list as shown above.

Generating the Icons for the Native Apps

I used this site and uploaded the 1024x1024 icon in the build/ directory: https://iconverticons.com/online/

Preparing Windows for Electron development

1. Install git-bash: https://git-scm.com/download/win
2. Install Python 2.x and have it set the environment variable on install: https://www.python.org/downloads/
3. Install Node/NPM: http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/install-node-js-npm-windows
4. Install the Windows build tools:

• Open cmd as an administrator
• Run: npm install --global --production windows-build-tools
• Run: npm config set msvs_version 2015 --global
• Close any shell or cmd windows

4. Run npm install against the desktop app directory
5. Run npm start to run the desktop app
6. Add the GH_TOKEN environment variable
7. Add the WIN_CSC_LINK environment variables
8. Add the WIN_CSC_KEY_PASSWORD environment variable

Building the App

$ .\node_modules\.bin\electron-builder.cmd build --windows nsis --x64 --ia32

Building and publishing

$ .\node_modules\.bin\electron-builder.cmd build --windows nsis --x64 --ia32 --publish always