Holochain Launcher

A cross-platform executable that launches a local Holochain conductor, and installs and opens apps.

Feedback is immensely welcome in the issues section.

Installing the Launcher

1. Go to the Releases page.
2. Download the appropriate executable for your platform and execute it.

Usage

Installing a hApp

If you already have a .webhapp

1. Click "Install App" in the Holochain Admin window, and select your .webhapp.
2. Set a unique AppId for the app, and click install, it may take a while.

   This AppId only needs to be unique inside your Holochain Launcher, it doesn't affect other users.

3. When it's finished installation, the happ will appear in the list of active happs.
4. Click Open in one of the installed apps to open the app.

Packaging a Web-hApp

Requirements:

• On the zome side, target hdk v0.0.109.
• On the UI side, target @holochain/conductor-api v0.2.1 (v0.2.0 is not going to work).

When your UI is served from the launcher and AppWebsocket.connect() or AdminWebsocket.connect() are called, the call will be redirected to the actual port in which Holochain is running its interfaces. Also, when the appWebsocket.appInfo({ installed_app_info: <APP_ID> }) is called, the APP_ID parameter is going to be replaced with the actual application ID that is installed in the Launcher.

For now, the UI still has access to the admin interface, but its usage is discouraged as newer versions of the launcher will block any admin requests not coming from the Holochain Admin UI itself. There will be a call available in AppWebsocket that will prompt the user to do an action in the Holochain Admin UI, or similar (To Be Defined).

1. Package your happ into a .happ file, with hc app pack.
2. Package your UI into a .zip file. IMPORTANT: this .zip is supposed to contain an index.html file in its root level.
3. Create a Web-hApp manifest with hc web-app init.
4. Set the corrrect locations for the UI .zip file and the .happ file.
5. Package your Web-hApp with hc web-app pack, and publish it so that other users can download and install it.

See where for a complete working setup.

Known issues

• Encryption at rest is not supported yet. It will be enabled when the upstream rusqlite crate creates the next release, introducing the option of statically bundling sqlcipher in MacOs and in Windows.
• Only MacOs v10.13 and after are supported at this moment.

Data storage

The Holochain Launcher uses the same config and data locations as the main holochain and lair-keystore processes. These locations are:

• Configuration: $CONFIG_DIR/holochain.
  • In Ubuntu this is $HOME/.config/holochain.
• Data: $DATA_DIR/holochain and $DATA_DIR/lair.
  • In Ubuntu this is $HOME/.local/share/holochain and $HOME/.local/share/lair.

To reset the launcher, you can execute a factory reset in the Holochain Admin window > Settings menu > Factory Reset.

Logs

Logs can be found at $DATA_DIR/holochain/logs/launcher.log. When reporting issues, please attach the contents of this file.

Developer Setup

See Developer Setup.

License

Copyright (C) 2019 - 2021, Holochain Foundation

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the license provided in the LICENSE file (CAL-1.0). This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.