• Development & Best Practices
  • Code of Conduct
  • Development
    • Development Mode
    • Build
  • Dependencies

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Development & Best Practices

This page describes how to set up a development environment to help with testing and running unreleased versions of Frolic.

Code of Conduct

Read our Code of Conduct to see if your development goals align with Frolic’s.

Development

The NodeJS version used by Frolic is locked to the Electron version and is currently 18.x. Having a system node of a higher version probably won’t hurt anything. The lead developer uses version 22. There are tools like nvm if you feel it might be an issue.

# Windows only:
npm install --global --production --vs2015 --add-python-to-path yarn node-gyp

# Ubuntu only:
sudo apt install libsecret-1-dev

# MacOS only:
brew install python-setuptools

# All operating systems:
git clone https://github.com/Frolic-chat/Frolic.git
cd Frolic
yarn

# Optional: make your commits anonymous
git config --local user.name "SOME NAME"
git config --local user.email "some@email.com"

Development Mode

While making changes, you can have your changes tested in real time by running two processes simultaneously:

#1: yarn watch

yarn watch

This will start real-time monitoring of file changes and rebuild changed codepaths, allowing you to check for many common code errors in real time.

#2 yarn start

yarn start
# Use `Ctrl+Shift+I` to open the Chromium developer tools.

This will launch the version of the app compiled by yarn watch, allowing you to log in and verify that everything is working correctly. It accepts common electron launch parameters like --pasword-store=... as well as the custom --devtools to launch the Chromium developer tools in their own windows.

Build

cd electron

yarn build:dist
node pack.js

Build Failure Troubleshooting

Unusual behavior while building can be caused by artifacts from past build failures.

Removing or renaming these directories is a good first-step to troubleshooting:

• frolic/electron/app - This folder will be recreated by yarn watch or yarn build:dist
• frolic/electon/dist - Ensure you’ve recovered any compiled builds you want to keep. This folder will be recreated by node pack.js or yarn pack-all

If you encounter error ‘Could not detect abi for version X.X.X and runtime electron’, try running:

npx uuaw node-abi

Dependencies

Note: Do not add or upgrade dependencies. If you feel there’s necessary upgrade, file an issue report and a discussion on the merits will ensue. Frequently, module upgrades cause undocumented behavior changes that can disturb the app and have to be tested at length. That’s why yarn.lock exists and is version controlled.

To upgrade NPM dependencies, run yarn upgrade locally. Run yarn outdated to see pending upgrades.

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