scratch-desktop
Scratch 3.0 as a standalone desktop application
Developer Instructions
scratch-gui
A note about Eventually, the scratch-desktop
branch of the Scratch GUI repository will be merged with that repository's main
development line. For now, though, the scratch-desktop
branch holds a few changes that are necessary for the Scratch
app to function correctly but are not yet merged into the main development branch. If you only intend to build or work
on the scratch-desktop
repository then you can ignore this, but if you intend to work on scratch-gui
as well, make
sure you use the scratch-desktop
branch there.
Previously it was necessary to explicitly build scratch-gui
before building scratch-desktop
. This is no longer
necessary and the related build scripts, such as build-gui
, have been removed.
Prepare media library assets
In the scratch-desktop
directory, run npm run fetch
. Re-run this any time you update scratch-gui
or make any
other changes which might affect the media libraries.
Run in development mode
npm start
Make a packaged build
npm run dist
Node that on macOS this will require installing various certificates.
Signing the NSIS installer (Windows, non-store)
This section is relevant only to members of the Scratch Team.
By default all Windows installers are unsigned. An APPX package for the Microsoft Store shouldn't be signed: it will be signed automatically as part of the store submission process. On the other hand, the non-Store NSIS installer should be signed.
To generate a signed NSIS installer:
- Acquire our latest digital signing certificate and save it on your computer as a
p12
file. - Set
WIN_CSC_LINK
to the path to your certificate file. For maximum compatibility I use forward slashes.- CMD:
set WIN_CSC_LINK=C:/Users/You/Somewhere/Certificate.p12
- PowerShell:
$env:WIN_CSC_LINK = "C:/Users/You/Somewhere/Certificate.p12"
- CMD:
- Set
WIN_CSC_KEY_PASSWORD
to the password string associated with your P12 file.- CMD:
set WIN_CSC_KEY_PASSWORD=superSecret
- PowerShell:
$env:WIN_CSC_KEY_PASSWORD = "superSecret"
- CMD:
- Build the NSIS installer only: building the APPX installer will fail if these environment variables are set.
npm run dist -- -w nsis
Workaround for code signing issue in macOS
Sometimes the macOS build process will result in a build which crashes on startup. If this happens, check in Console
for an entry similar to this:
failed to parse entitlements for Scratch[12345]: OSUnserializeXML: syntax error near line 1
This appears to be an issue with codesign
itself. Rebooting your computer and trying to build again might help. Yes,
really.
See this issue for more detail: electron/osx-sign#218
Make a semi-packaged build
This will simulate a packaged build without actually packaging it: instead the files will be copied to a subdirectory
of dist
.
npm run dist:dir
Debugging
You can debug the renderer process by opening the Chromium development console. This should be the same keyboard shortcut as Chrome on your platform. This won't work on a packaged build.
You can debug the main process the same way as any Node.js process. I like to use Visual Studio Code with a configuration like this:
"launch": {
"version": "0.2.0",
"configurations": [
{
"name": "Desktop",
"type": "node",
"request": "launch",
"cwd": "${workspaceFolder:scratch-desktop}",
"runtimeExecutable": "npm",
"autoAttachChildProcesses": true,
"runtimeArgs": ["start", "--"],
"protocol": "inspector",
"skipFiles": [
// it seems like skipFiles only reliably works with 1 entry :(
//"<node_internals>/**",
"${workspaceFolder:scratch-desktop}/node_modules/electron/dist/resources/*.asar/**"
],
"sourceMaps": true,
"timeout": 30000,
"outputCapture": "std"
}
]
},