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 or yarn install --frozen-lockfile
3. Export the environment variables:
   • CHROMEDRIVER_SKIP_DOWNLOAD (set to true)
   • DETECT_CHROMEDRIVER_VERSION (set to false)
   • 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-desktop
6. Find the built apps in the desktop/release

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

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 npm run 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).