Development

If you want to run the code, there's a few steps involved. Once you clone the repository, you'll need to install any dependencies, compile a few things with grunt, and compile a couple modules. It will look a little like this:

Step Zero: Install node. If you're using Windows, you also need to install windows-build-tools. Finally, you'll need to install yarn and grunt.

OK! Now, clone the code:

git clone git@github.com:muffinista/before-dawn.git
cd ./before-dawn

Then, install all the required modules. Right now, Before Dawn uses yarn to handle dependencies. I'd prefer to use npm (and keep the number of extra packages required to a minimum), but right now, yarn does a better job of handling cross-platform issues. Anyway, install yarn and then run:

yarn install

This should install all the modules required to run and develop the application. It should also compile a few modules to work properly with Electron.

(Old note that you can hopefully ignore): If a module ever gets re-installed and then not properly compiled, you might need to run a command like this to get it to work with Electron:

./node_modules/.bin/electron-rebuild -w node-system-idle-time

A few parts of the application use React, and the CSS for the application uses Sass, so they need to be compiled. There is a gruntfile which will handle this for you:

grunt

Or you can run grunt watch and it should recompile things every time you make a change.

At this point you are ready to run the app!

yarn start

Code Layout

The root directory of the repo contains a bunch of scripts for building the application, some tool scripts, tests, etc. The code lives in the app/ directory, and here's some highlights:

• main.js is the main application code. It handles booting the app, launching things when needed, and detects when it is time to launch a screensaver.
• bootstrap.js handles initializing some global variables
• app/html holds the HTML for the preferences window, editor, etc.
• app/js holds the Javascript needed to run those windows
• app/js/components holds a couple React components used in the UI
• app/lib holds a bunch of non-UI framework code.

There's also a test suite in test/

Command-Line Options

There's a few command-line options to make things easier. You can use them like this:

npm start -- --debug --screen=prefs

• --debug will start the application with the JS console open. Also, if/when a screensaver activates, it will be in a window with the developer tools available, rather than in full screen mode, and the saver won't close when you move the mouse or touch a key -- this can be handy for testing.
• --screen=prefs will start the app and open the preferences window automatically.
• --screen=about will open the about window automatically.
• --screen=saver will open the screensaver automatically.