Support specifying which Electron app to render

[Torxed]

Steps to reproduce

Install and run the desktop client.

Outcome

CORS is a PITA with the desktop app, and most of the guides will tell you to set * for Access-Control-Allow-Origin to get around the symptoms that people experience which is not at all what I would recommend.

And I don't agree with arguments such as #20227 (comment) because it is partially Elements causing these issues through documentation and odd requests to the server.

The fact that I cannot force which servers to talk to in the electron desktop client is an issue. I don't like other domains, and the whole point of riot/element/vector is that it's supposed to be self-hosted and that you should be able to own all aspects of the communication. So why is it communicating with *(rhetorical question, I understand why but this should not be happening):

• matrix.org
• matrix-client.matrix.org
• vector.im

Along side this, the desktop client sends a bogus vector://vector origin to the chosen server, which is only supposed to be a local schema to override loading of external URL's and not something that is really a URL that I'd want to accept on the server side.

So either make it clear that the desktop app is not self-hosted only or make it so that it doesn't request these external domains until you attempt to login, in which case the user has chosen to supply a domain to login against.
And at the very least, make the Origin reflect correctly which host is actually being retrieved.

Sidenote: this statement of changing name to Element should probably be done across the board, when things are called riot or vector or element is a tad bit confusing.. Not really something I care about but it is confusing at times.

Operating system

flatpak

Application version

latest

How did you install the app?

flatpak install im.riot.Riot

Homeserver

any

Will you send logs?

No

[t3chguy]

because it is partially Elements causing these issues through documentation and odd requests to the server.

Care to elaborate?

The fact that I cannot force which servers to talk to in the electron desktop client is an issue. I don't like other domains, and the whole point of riot/element/vector is that it's supposed to be self-hosted and that you should be able to own all aspects of the communication.

Yes you can, via config.json you can replace all of those domains.

So why is it communicating with *(rhetorical question, I understand why but this should not be happening):
matrix.org
matrix-client.matrix.org
vector.im

This is #11154 / #11655

So either make it clear that the desktop app is not self-hosted only or make it so that it doesn't request these external domains until you attempt to login, in which case the user has chosen to supply a domain to login against.

I am struggling to see how this relates to the issue title Support specifying which Electron app to render but if the above summary is your issue then it sounds like #11655

The title verbatim sounds more like #8299 (comment) though