OpenCompany Desktop Wrapper

Background

Transparency, honesty, kindness, good stewardship, even humor, work in businesses at all times.

-- John Gerzema

Teams struggle to keep everyone on the same page. People are hyper-connected in the moment with chat and email, but it gets noisy as teams grow, and people miss key information. Everyone needs clear and consistent leadership, and the solution is surprisingly simple and effective - great leadership updates that build transparency and alignment.

With that in mind we designed Carrot, a software-as-a-service application powered by the open source OpenCompany platform and this source-available web UI.

With Carrot, important company updates, announcements, stories, and strategic plans create focused, topic-based conversations that keep everyone aligned without interruptions. When information is shared transparently, it inspires trust, new ideas and new levels of stakeholder engagement. Carrot makes it easy for leaders to engage with employees, investors, and customers, creating alignment for everyone.

Transparency expectations are changing. Organizations need to change as well if they are going to attract and retain savvy teams, investors and customers. Just as open source changed the way we build software, transparency changes how we build successful companies with information that is open, interactive, and always accessible. Carrot turns transparency into a competitive advantage.

To get started, head to: Carrot

Overview

The OpenCompany Web Application provides a Web UI for creating and consuming open company content and data.

OS Support

MacOS and Windows (Linux coming soon)...

Local Setup

Prospective users of Carrot should get started by going to Carrot.io. The following local setup is for developers wanting to work on the Web application.

Most of the dependencies are internal, meaning [Shadow-cljs]https://shadow-cljs.github.io/) will handle getting them for you. There are a few exceptions:

• Java 8 - a Java 8 JRE is needed to run Clojure
• Node LTE
• NPM - A command line tool and package manager for Javascript

Java

Chances are your system already has Java 8+ installed. You can verify this with:

java -version

If you do not have Java 8+ download it and follow the installation instructions.

An option we recommend is OpenJDK. There are instructions for Linux and Homebrew can be used to install OpenJDK on a Mac with:

brew tap AdoptOpenJDK/openjdk
brew update
brew cask install adoptopenjdk8

NPM

Installing NPM is easy, for the most up to date instructions, check out the Downloading & installing Node.js and npm. You can verify your install with:

npm --version
node --version

Desktop Application Usage

The Carrot desktop application is built using the Electron framework. Via Electron, we're able to launch a thin application shell (a modified Chromium browser) that loads the Carrot web application, and provides it with hooks for accessing native desktop features.

The primary source files to be aware of when developing on the desktop application are:

• main.cljs: the main electron process is configured and launched here
• renderer.js: the electron renderer process, which injects native features into the hosted Carrot web page
• package.json: node dependency manifest, and home of build/sign/publish configuration

Developing locally

Because the desktop application simply loads the Carrot web app, you need the web client running on your system and serving files. Once that works and you can see the login page at http://localhost:3559/login you are ready to start the Desktop app development.

Run the following commands in this repo root folder:

npx shadow-cljs compile desktopapp
npm install
npm run start

If all goes well, the desktop application should open in a new window, and load localhost:3559.

Packaging for deployment

There are two environments against which we can package the Carrot desktop app: staging and production. To switch between the 2 comment or uncomment the relative variables group in the electron-builder.env file. Then run:

npx shadow-cljs release desktopapp

Both of these commands result in a production-ready build located in the target/ directory, and each will load the respective Carrot web application upon launch. From here, you're free to test locally if you so wish:

npm install
npm run start

To actually distribute the application, we first need to package the app (DMG on Mac, EXE installer on Windows), codesign the resulting artifact, and then publish the signed artifact to GitHub releases. Luckily these steps are largely automated, but there is a bit of one-time setup.

One-time Setup

First, you'll need to have the appropriate Apple certificates installed to your Mac's keychain (ask an admin). You'll also need the team's provisioning profile to perform development builds. Get this from a team member, and download it to your local system. Place the file in a well known place (e.g. your ~/code/carrot directory**. Do not put it in the repository.

Next, we need to configure our environment with a few secrets:

cp electron-builder.example.env electron-builder.env

Edit this file appropriately. You can generate a GitHub token for yourself here. Make sure to select the write:packages scope. Note that this file is ignored by git.

With these in place, use the following to build, sign, and publish a desktop release.

Finally, be sure to log in to developer.apple.com at least one time to accept their terms of service and fully activate your account.

Staging Release (Mac)

This will produce a development build runnable by the devices specified in the supplied provisioning profile.

# Bump the version in package.json to X.Y.Z
vim package.json

git add .
git commit -m "Bump desktop version"
git push

npx shadow-cljs release desktopapp
npm install
npx electron-builder -c.mac.type=development -c.mac.provisioningProfile=/path/to/your/Carrot_MacOS_Development_Profile.provisionprofile --publish always

NOTE: /path/to/your/Carrot_MacOS_Development_Profile.provisionprofile is the path that you saved the provisioning profile to from the above step (e.g. /Users/me/code/carrot/Carrot_MacOS.provisionprofile). Make sure to use an absolute path in the command line argument; relative paths will not work!

Keep in mind that this can take a while (~10 minutes) due to requiring Apple's servers to notarize the application.

This will build, sign, notarize, and publish a tagged draft release to GitHub Releases. The tag will match the version number specified in package.json.

Because this is a development build in Apple's eyes, it is only runnable by the devices included in the supplied provisioning profile. You should not publish this build in the GitHub Release panel, and instead should distribute it to testers manually.

Production Release (Mac)

Before performing this step, be sure that your changes have been fully merged into master. All prod desktop builds should be made from the master branch.

npx shadow-cljs release desktopapp
npm install
npx electron-builder -c.mac.type=distribution -c.mac.identity="OpenCompany, LLC (XXXXXXXXXX)" --publish always

You can find the proper value for the -c.mac.identity value in your Mac Keychain.

Keep in mind that this can take a while (~10 minutes) due to requiring Apple's servers to notarize the application.

This will build, sign, notarize, and publish a tagged draft release to GitHub Releases. Navigate your way there, and if you're ready to roll the release out to customers, you can Publish the draft. Existing client installations will sense the new update, and automatically install it in the background.

Production Release (Windows)

Be sure to follow the same one-time setup that we did above on your Windows machine. Ask an admin for the relevant Windows certs.

To build on windows, you'll need to install a few tools:

• Java
• Node LTE
• NPM
• Ruby
• SASS

Now you're able to run the following from the Windows PowerShell:

Before performing this step, be sure that your changes have been fully merged into master. All prod desktop builds should be made from the master branch.

npx shadow-cljs release desktopapp
npm install
npx electron-builder --win --publish always

This will build, sign, and publish an EXE to GitHub Releases alongside any existing Mac builds with the same version. This EXE is an installer, and is completely self-contained.

To produce a test build without releasing it replace the last command with:

npx electron-builder --win

Participation

Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.

License

Copyright © 2015-2021 OpenCompany, LLC.

This code is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

This means the code is source available to you, but is not open source, due to the following terms of the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

This code 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.