aports/testing/electron

electron

This is the electron package for Alpine Linux.

Please report any issues using Gitlab and tag @ayakael

Building electron

Electron is an application framework based on chromium. Just like chromium, and any Google application, the build process is a form of [hostile architecture] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture) It's quite literally chromium with patches applied on top for the most part. The build process applies a series of git patches against chromium from directories with a script.

Its source code isn't available as a downloadable tarball. It is only fetchable using Google's gclient available in depot_tools with a reimplemented version in the teapot package. By executing, abuild snapshot, the tarball can be fetched and packaged, as long as gclient is in your path. For ease of maintenance, a workflow on Ayakael's Forge automatically fetches and packages the source code on new releases and makes it available in a generic Forgejo repository.

Electron maintenance cycle

Security / bug fixes land from upstream land randomly, but chromium security fixes land basically weekly around Tuesday in America/Los_Angeles. Minor relases only require an upgrade to the electron packages. It is advisable to follow chromium weekly security fixes, although following electron minor releases is fine.

Major version upgrades require a more thorough approach. For one, most changes can be backported from chromium APKBUILD by diffing the previous version packaged with electron with the current (set with _chromium var). You also need to rebuild all electron apps, with patches sometimes necessary when upstream bumps to a new nodejs major verion. Major electron releases are every two chromium major releases, with [dates known well ahead] (https://chromiumdash.appspot.com/schedule) with a few major releases of electron officially supported at a time.

Steps, in a nutshell:

1. Set pkgver to up-to-date version

2. Optional: fetch source-code using abuild snapshot, making sure gclient is in your path

3. Update source checksum using abuild checksum

4. If major update, backport changes from chromium aport and bump pkgrel for all electron-based applications.

Why is this package still in testing

Work is under way to make this aport ready for community

Until that happens, this package is also kept-to-date against the latest release of Alpine Linux in Ayakael's Forge This is true of all Ayakael's packages still in testing.