Remote updates - Githubissues

electron-webapps / meteor-electron

Meteor Electron, the easiest way to create a desktop Meteor application

MIT License

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Remote updates #19

Closed wearhere closed 8 years ago

wearhere commented 8 years ago

This will reduce in scope once the previous PRs have been merged.

Heads-up @rissem, Mac apps must be code-signed for Electron's auto-updater to work, so we must disable the ability for the server to build the app (since only Macs can code-sign and it is unlikely that the server is a Mac).

So, no point bothering with the electronDownload helper anymore.

I don't think that this detracts from the library's utility overly much though since if the user still wants their webserver to serve the build they can just copy it into the public directory and it will work just like the old static serving:

// From project directory
cp .meteor-electron/final/app-darwin.zip public/app-darwin.zip

// App is now available at http://localhost:3000/app-darwin.zip

rissem commented 8 years ago

Just starting to look at this now, but my gut feeling is it's still a good thing for a lot of people if the app can be automatically built by the server (Windows builds, Mac builds not going through the app store, etc.)

wearhere commented 8 years ago

@rissem the app needs to be code-signed even if it will be distributed outside the MAS, unfortunately—it's just a requirement of Electron's auto-updater.

wearhere commented 8 years ago

Looking ahead to Windows, we'll need to install Wine which will probably be a lot easier locally if it's even possible on the server (the Meteor package would have to install a binary/non-NPM dependency, for whatever server architecture, using who knows what permissions).

Also, Windows needs to be code-signed too and even if an arbitrary server can do that, it still wouldn't be turnkey—the user would need to provide their certificate.

So, basically my feeling is that meteor-electron:

can and should (and does, currently) support turn-key packaging for local use, but
packaging for remote use will need a bit of configuration, and be done locally—and that's ok given that it's not that much configuration and not that hard to copy the locally-built file to a server or even just the public folder.

wearhere commented 8 years ago

Did you manually merge this PR @rissem? If so, let's close this out and continue the threads above in new issues.