/Signal-Desktop-Development-Guide

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Signal Desktop Development Guide

Also available as gitbook.

Local development

Local development means running Signal Desktop from local files, it can be started with something like:

npm install       # Install and build dependencies (this will take a while)
npm run generate  # Generate final JS and CSS assets
npm test          # A good idea to make sure tests run first
npm start         # Start Signal!

To see something meaningful when running npm start, you'll need to use Set Up as Standalone Device and then copy you production data folder to your development folder.

Once you've done that you'll something very close to your production version of Signal-Desktop.

Set Up as Standalone Device

The first thing you'll have to to do is 'Set Up as Standalone Device' so that Signal Desktop thinks you're authenticated.

You won't have any contacts, though, so nobody to message.

Setting up test data

you can use the information from your production install of Signal Desktop to populate your testing application! -- CONTRIBUTING.md.

All that means is you can copy files from you production version to your test version:

~/.config/Signal -> ~/.config/Signal-development

This definitely means you now have messages, as they're stored in ~/.config/Signal/sql/db.sqlite.

As far as everything else, I'm not yet sure.

Where is production version installed?

whereis signal-desktop
signal-desktop: /usr/bin/signal-desktop

Starting with developer tools

(Yes this does work in production.)

# See: `defaultWebPrefs` in app/main.ts
/usr/bin/signal-desktop --enable-dev-tools

More switches.

Contacts

Conversations and messages

Debugging

Logs

For tests find logs at something like: /tmp/mock-signal-XXXXXXQZedmQ/logs/main.log.

Where is window.Signal?

When debugging, window.Signal is not available to the developer console. Why?

window.Signal is assigned in ts/windows/main/phase2-dependencies.ts which is part of the Electron preload.

This is because of context isolation.

Terminology