signal-desktop

Signal Desktop

This guid is written by using Signal Desktop on branch Master version 1.30.0-beta.4

Requirement

• NVM 12.4.0

How To

1. Install requirement

on MacOS, Install Command Line Tools & git-lfs, to install run these commands.

xcode-select --install
sudo xcode-select --switch /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools
brew install git-lfs

On Win7, Install .Net 4.5.1 & Windows SDK 8.1 & Windows Build Tools. Then run this command.

npm install --global --production --add-python-to-path windows-build-tools

On Linux, Install python, gcc, g++, make

sudo apt-get install python, gcc, g++, make

2. Clone signal-desktop

3. Mount signal desktop directory

cd Signal-Desktop

4. Install yarn

npm install --global yarn

5. Install & build with yarn

yarn install --frozen-lockfile

6. Generate final JS & CSS

yarn grunt

7. Generate full-set icon

yarn icon-gen

8. Build with webpack

yarn build:webpack

9. You can test with

yarn test 

10. Start the app

yarn start

11. To connect to own production server, create local-development.json, the value is the same as production.json but without updateEnabled.

{
  "serverUrl": "https://domain.com",
  "cdnUrl": "https://cdn-domain.com",
  "serverTrustRoot": "public-key-generated-in-signal-server-step-4",
  "updatesEnabled": true
}

Using own Server

1. Update config/deafult.json, set serverUrl & cdnUrl by using your Server URL & your CDN url, don’t include trailing slash on serverUrl and cdnUrl.

2. Update config/default.json, set certificateAuthority using CA’s SSL Certificate.

3. Update config/default.json, set serverTrustRoot using your CAPublicKey (Also used in android as UNIDENTIFIED SENDER TRUST ROOT).

4. Update js/modules/web_api.js, find functions called getAttachment and putAttachment, then replace ${cdnUrl}/attachments/${id} with ${cdnUrl}/ (Do this if you do the same in android client).

5. Still on the same functions, set a default value for certificateAuthority variable using your Certificate Authority (see below), remember new line in your certificateAuthority needs to be formatted to “\n”.

change this

...
certificateAuthority,
...

to this

...
certificateAuthority: "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\n change-to-your-certificate \n-----END CERTIFICATE-----\n",
...

6. Run the commands to rebuild the project

yarn generate
yarn build
yarn start

FAQ

Q: I already have node but the version is not 12.4.0

A: You can run nvm use 12.4.0 to use the node 12.4.0 on the project.

Q: How to create installation package?

A: After running yarn build the package will be listed on release directory.

Q: I did a change to the assets but the change did not reflect, why?

A: You can run yarn grunt dev first.

Q: How can I run the development server for Sticker Creator?

A: Run yarn dev

Q: How to enable request to development server?

A: On Linux & Mac run this command to start the development

SIGNAL_ENABLE_HTTP=1 yarn start

Q: How could I get certificate authority?

A: I called it the certificate of the certificate issuer. You can try browsing a https web using chrome, click on lock pad beside the URL address bar, then click on "Certificate (Valid)", you will see the top most & orange certificate, that is what you need, drag it to your desktop to save it.

Q: Certificate Authority from browser is not in readable format, what should i do?

A: If you got .cer format, then convert your certificate from DER to PEM by running this command. After this, you can open your pem certificate in any editor.

openssl x509 -inform der -in certificate_name.cer -out certificate_name.pem