[Feature 🚀]: Use system electron for Arch Linux

[skbeh]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Currently the pacman package ships an electron, which violates Electron package guidelines of Arch Linux and wastes space.
Describe the solution you'd like

• Only include kuro.asar and shell wrapper in the Arch package, name it as kuro-bin and submit the package to AUR. (It seems that it runs properly on https://archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/electron/)
• Make the kuro package in AUR be built from source.

[btasdelen]

Hi @skbeh, I am the maintainer of the kuro AUR package.

Is kuro-electron your package? I believe it does what you want.

However, there are some things I wanted to discuss.

1. Shipping the Electron with the app does not violate the Electron package guidelines. Here are two quotes from the page:

Arch Linux provides global electron and versioned electron* packages that can be used to run an electron application ...

If the package contains a prebuilt copy of electron, copy the final distribution in its entirety to /opt/appname.

These quotes suggest that shipping (or not) is an option, not an obligation.

2. Duplicate submissions does violate the guidelines AUR submission guidelines.

Check the AUR if the package already exists. If it is currently maintained, changes can be submitted in a comment for the maintainer's attention. If it is unmaintained or the maintainer is unresponsive, the package can be adopted and updated as required. Do not create duplicate packages.

So, the best way to do it is to decide something and do it on the original package.

3. I agree that shipping the Electron with the Kuro wastes space, but it is also conveinent and portable. Uusing system Electron requires additional maintanence. It needs to be updated if the Kuro decides to use a different version.

Maybe @davidsmorais can chime in on this.

[skbeh]

@bilal-tasdelen kuro-electron is not my package.
Updating electron may be the responsibility of the package maintainer, and Arch Linux repo have most of the LTS electron versions.
Usually the names of AUR packages that are not built from source have a suffix of -bin.

[btasdelen]

I agree with the -bin suffix. There were no other kuro packages around except the kuro-appimage, so I went with the simplest name that time, but it should have been kuro-bin. If someone goes there and creates a PKGBUILD for building kuro, I can move current version to kuro-bin.

[skbeh]

@bilal-tasdelen This is an example: https://github.com/skbeh/kuro

[btasdelen]

@skbeh I copied my package to kuro-bin. Would you like me to transfer ownership of kuro to you?

[skbeh]

@bilal-tasdelen I may not have enough time to keep it updated. It would be better to add me to co-maintainers.

[btasdelen]

@skbeh I migrated the package to your PKGBUILD. I can add you as co-maintainer if you give me your AUR username.

One issue: Themes do not seem to work with compiled Kuro, but works fine with kuro-bin.

[benjezzy]

@bilal-tasdelen @skbeh Themes are now broken on both kuro & kuro-bin for me, meaning I'm stuck on retina-burning 'White' theme for now. Any change we can fix or at least temporarily revert?

Happy to help with debugging/testing.

[skbeh]

Themes are now broken on both kuro & kuro-bin for me, meaning I'm stuck on retina-burning 'White' theme for now. Any change we can fix or at least temporarily revert?

Happy to help with debugging/testing.

Actually, Microsoft To-do has its own dark theme, which can be enabled in setting as a workaround.

[skbeh]

@bilal-tasdelen Preload js failed probably because of https://www.electronjs.org/de/docs/latest/breaking-changes#default-changed-renderers-without-nodeintegration-true-are-sandboxed-by-default.
Reverted to electron 18. (https://github.com/skbeh/kuro/commit/facb0bb29a08c573bddbc823e3659a9bd7562e21)

[btasdelen]

@skbeh I am getting following error during makepkg with the updated PKGBUILD:

==> Starting build()...
yarn install v1.22.19
[1/4] Resolving packages...
success Already up-to-date.
$ electron-builder install-app-deps
/bin/sh: line 1: electron-builder: command not found
error Command failed with exit code 127.
info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/install for documentation about this command.
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in build().
    Aborting...

Edit: Could this be relevant?
electron-userland/electron-builder#5410

[skbeh]

@bilal-tasdelen Fixed.

[btasdelen]

@skbeh The fix, worked for me. Thank you.

@benjezzy can you confirm it is fixed for you as well? I already updated the AUR package.

[davidsmorais]

Thanks for this guys 👋 I've been away for the weekend and Arch/AUR isn't really something I can do much about 😅

[benjezzy]

@bilal-tasdelen I've tested both kuro & kuro-bin from the AUR and in both instances, themes work great so thanks for sorting it out!

[btasdelen]

@benjezzy Thanks for testing it!

@skbeh I would suggest closing the issue, as most of your suggested solutions are implemented. Let me know if you have further requests.

[skbeh]

@bilal-tasdelen @davidsmorais Maybe we should consider moving to electron 19 now, because electron 18 is EOL since 3 months ago and it is orphan in the AUR.
In the long run, the issue with electron 20 also has to be solved.