Generating Installers

These mix tasks generate binary installers for your Elixir-Desktop project in corresponding native formats. Currently supported output formats are:

• Windows: .exe installer (NSIS based)
• MacOS: .dmg download package
• Linux: .run makeself installer.

Usage

1. Add a new release to your project configuration that includes the &Desktop.Deployment.generate_installer/1 steps
2. Add the package: package() configuration with your app packaging information. If you don't provide these, default values will be used.
3. Run mix desktop.installer to generate the installer for your current OS

  def project do
    [
      package: package(),
      releases: [
        default: [
          applications: [runtime_tools: :permanent, ssl: :permanent],
          steps: [:assemble, &Desktop.Deployment.generate_installer/1]
        ],
      ],
    ]
  end

  def package() do
    [
      name: "MyApp",
      name_long: "The most wonderfull App Ever",
      description: "MyApp is an Elixir App for Desktop",
      description_long: "MyApp for Desktop is powered by Phoenix LiveView",
      icon: "priv/icon.png",
      # https://developer.gnome.org/menu-spec/#additional-category-registry
      category_gnome: "GNOME;GTK;Office;",
      category_macos: "public.app-category.productivity",
      identifier: "io.myapp.app",
    ]
  end  

Installation

The the package can be installed by adding desktop_deployment to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:desktop_deployment, "~> 0.1", runtimes: false}
  ]
end

Deployment Strategies

Windows -> NSIS

All builds (specifically NIFs) are built using msys2, because it's mostly linux compatible but runs natively on windows without any helper libraries.

0. Installing prerequsites

• msys2.org
• pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-imagemagick mingw-w64-x86_64-nsis mingw-w64-x86_64-nsis mingw-w64-x86_64-osslsigncode mingw-w64-x86_64-openssl

1. mix deployment will generate the release binaries

To support windows code signing the user has to create two certificate files app_key.pem and app_key.pem (e.g. get from sectigo) and put them into the rel/win32/ subdirectory.

Known Issues / Comments

• The .vbs file is used as indirection for the .bat file as it avoid creating a black terminal screen that otherwise flashes shortly when launchin a .bat file directly

• The .nsis file currently registers a app:// protocol handler, this is example use and can be removed for other apps.

• After having done static builds for iOS now we're thinking a pure .exe build for Windows might actually be a much cleaner solution. But TBD

MacOS -> DMG

MacOS has two variants ARM (M1,2,3...) and legacy x86 if you want to enable your builds on both platforms the easiest way is to have the CI (e.g. GitHub) have the build done on a x86_64 machine. Then the rosetta compatibility layer will make it runnable on ARM too. For this rosetta is enabled explicitly in the .plist file for ARM machines.

Code signing is done as part of the desktop.installer task if and only if a developer_id is provided. This can be provided through one of these environment variables:

• MACOS_DEVELOPER_ID - String of the user uid
• MACOS_PEM - PEM file with both user uid and user certificate for signing

In addition the keychain to be used can be specified using:

• MACOS_KEYCHAIN - Name/path of the keychain defaults to the result of security login-keychain

1. mix desktop.installer
2. mix desktop.notarize <username@apple_account.com> <app_specific_password> <team_id> _build/prod/*.dmg

Known Issues / Comments

• Background images for the deployment window of the .dmg (when clicking that on macos) are hardcoded in the rel/macosx/ subdirectory. I've not yet discovered how to properly (dynamically) create them. Also haven't found out how to set the DMGs icon to be non-standard as some apps do.

• Best to use the most recent wxWidgets on macos, as e.g. taskbar icon size bug fixes are only present there.

Linux -> makeself

Known Issues / Comments

• wxWidgets notifications+taskbar support is really varying accross distributions. Currently we have a pure Elixir dbus implementation.

• Getting distribution independent linux binaries is really though. Main issues have been library dependencies of different versions. Future thoughts for this:

  • Switch to AppImage
  • Switch to deb packages
  • other?

Build dependencies

Building on Ubuntu Linux

Install Dependencies and Tools:

# Tools
sudo apt install curl git inotify-tools libtool automake make lksctp-tools build-essential
# Build dependencies
sudo apt install libssl-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libtiff-dev zlib1g-dev libncurses5-dev libssh-dev unixodbc-dev libgmp3-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.0-dev libsctp-dev libgtk-3-dev libnotify-dev libsecret-1-dev catch mesa-common-dev libglu1-mesa-dev freeglut3-dev

Install wxWidgets 3.1.5:

mkdir ~/projects && cd ~/projects
git clone https://github.com/dominicletz/wxWidgets.git
cd wxWidgets
git submodule update --init
./configure --enable-compat30
make -j4

Install Erlang OTP24:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kerl/kerl/master/kerl
chmod a+x kerl
sudo mv kerl /usr/bin/
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/projects/wxWidgets/lib
export KERL_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS=--with-wxdir=$HOME/projects/wxWidgets
kerl build git https://github.com/diodechain/otp.git diode/beta 24.beta
kerl install 24.beta ~/24.beta
. ~/24.beta/activate

Install Elixir:

mkdir $HOME/elixir && cd $HOME/elixir
wget https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/releases/download/v1.11.4/Precompiled.zip
unzip Precompiled.zip
echo "export PATH=\"$HOME/elixir/bin:\$PATH\"" >> ~/.bashrc
export PATH="$HOME/elixir/bin:$PATH"

Install NodeJS:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.37.2/install.sh | bash
nvm install v12.16.1

Note: If you get "nvm: command not found" after running "nvm install v12.16.1" in the terminal, try closing the current teminal, opening a new one, and then running "nvm install v12.16.1" again. (see https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm/blob/master/README.md#troubleshooting-on-linux for more information).

Building on macOS

Start with the dependencies:

brew install binutils automake elixir kerl libtool gmp
export PATH=/usr/local/opt/binutils/bin:$PATH

WxWidgets with recent macOS fixes

mkdir -p ~/projects/
cd ~/projects/
git clone https://github.com/dominicletz/wxWidgets.git
cd wxWidgets
git submodule update --init
./configure --enable-compat30
make -j4

Build with kerl

kerl build git https://github.com/diodechain/otp.git diode/beta 24.beta
kerl install 24.beta ~/24.beta
. ~/24.beta/activate

Install nodejs / npm 12.16.1

brew install npm
nvm install v12.16.1
cd assets && npm install && cd ..

Compile and run:

mix local.hex --force
mix local.rebar --force
mix deps.get

. ~/24.beta/activate
./run

Building on Windows

Install Dependencies:

Get Erlang 24:diode/beta http://github.com/diodechain/

Get Elixir 1.11.4 https://elixir-lang.org/install.html

Get msys2 https://www.msys2.org/ - And a whole bunch of deps: pacman -Syu pacman -S --noconfirm pacman-mirrors pkg-config pacman -S --noconfirm --needed base-devel autoconf automake make libtool mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-openssl mingw-w64-x86_64-libtool git

Get nsis https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Main_Page

Get npm & node 12.x from https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v12.x/

If not merged yet apply this patch on esqlite: https://github.com/blt/port_compiler/pull/69/files

> vim `find -iname pc_port_specs.erl`
> find -iname pc_port_specs.beam -delete

Sometimes libsecp256k_nif.dll is not created in that case copy the libsecp256k_nif.so to libsecp256k_nif.dll > make -C deps/

Compile & Run:

Keep pressing ENTER during the compilation or it gets stuck...