peergos-ui-web

The Web interface for Peergos

Screenshots

We avoid JS based build tools and managers like npm, webpack etc. to maintain greater control over the build process. This allows us to achieve cross-platform reproducible builds and future proof our build system (we should be able to build any commit any number of years into the future with only a JVM). The one exception to this is precompiling vue.js templates, which is done using vue-template-compiler run in a vendored copy of GraalJS.

All our assets are vendored and served from a single domain, for improved privacy, security and reliability. We use a very simple custom replacement for webpack written in Java which can handle vue components, called JPack.

Most of the complex logic around encryption etc. is implemented in Java in the peergos submodule. This is all cross-compiled to JS using GWT during the compile_server target. We plan to upgrade this to J2CL when time and resources permit. Components are implemented as Vue 2 components in src/components.

Setup

Requires ant and Java 11.

NB: all other dependencies are checked into the repo, or into the submodule peergos repo.

Debian/Ubuntu/Mint

sudo apt install openjdk-11-jdk ant

MacOS

brew install ant # installs openjdk as a dependency
ant -version
Apache Ant(TM) version 1.10.8 compiled on May 10 2020

Running

Server

# Build and run an ephemeral local Peergos server on http://localhost:8000
ant update_and_run

# or in dev mode - this disables CSP headers and vue template precompilation
ant update_and_run_dev

Web Interface

# This builds the ui in prod mode
ant ui

# This builds the ui in dev mode, this only works with the server in dev mode, otherwise vue is blocked by our CSP. 
ant ui_dev

# This rebuilds the ui in dev mode whenever a file changes or is added in assets, vendor or src
ant watch_ui

Browser tests

README

Development

Navigation between apps

Navigation between apps is driven by updating the URL fragment with an encrypted object, except for secret links which don't update the history

• drive.openFile(writable) -> getApp(file, path, writable)

  • isSecretLink ? drive.openInApp(args, app) OR openFileOrDir(app, path, args, writable)

• openFileOrDir(app, path, args, writable) -> updateHistory

• updateHistory(app, path, args, writable)

  • put these fields into an encrypted object in the url fragment

• onUrlChange

  • set view from props decrypted from URL
  • for non sidebar apps, call drive.openInApp(args, app)

• drive.openInApp(args, app)

  • set showX = true OR closeApps()