Spectre Desktop

Spectre Desktop is a dedicated desktop process manager for Spectre node.

Spectre Desktop process configuration (available via a simple JSON editor) allows user to specify command-line arguments for executables, as such it is possible to configure it to run multiple instances of Spectre or potentially run multiple networks simultaneously (provided Spectre nodes do not pro-actively auto-discover each-other).

Like many desktop applications, Spectre Desktop can run in the tray bar, out of the way.

Spectre Desktop is built using NWJS and is compatible Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

Building Spectre Desktop

Pre-requisites

• Node.js 14.0.0+
• Emanator

NOTE: Spectre Desktop build process builds and includes latest Spectre binaries from Git main branches. To build from specific branches, you can use --branch... flags (see below).

Generating Spectre Desktop installers

To build and deploy Spectre Desktop production-ready builds, do the following:

mkdir spectre-build
cd spectre-build
npm install emanator@latest
git clone https://github.com/spectre-project/spectre-desktop
cd spectre-desktop

Emanator will help to create standalone desktop applications using NWJS. It accepts the following flags:

• --portable will create a portable zipped application.
• --innosetup will generate Windows setup executable.
• --dmg will generate a DMG image for macOS.
• --all will generate all OS compatible packages.

Additionally the following flags can be used to reset the environment:

• --clean clean build folders: purges cloned GOPATH folder
• --reset deletes downloaded/cached NWJS and NODE binaries

The --clean and --reset can be combined to cleanup build folder and cached files.

DMG - Building DMG images on macOS requires sudo access in order to use system tools such as diskutil to generate images:

sudo ../node_modules/.bin/emanate build --dmg

To build the Windows portable deployment, run the following command:

../node_modules/.bin/emanate build --archive --portable

To build the Windows installer, you need to install Innosetup and run:

../node_modules/.bin/emanate build --innosetup

Emanator stores build files in the ~/emanator folder.

Running Spectre Desktop from development environment

In addition to Node.js (must be 14.0+), please download and install Latest NWJS SDK https://nwjs.io - make sure that nw executable is available in the system PATH and that you can run nw from command line.

On Linux / Darwin, as good way to install node and nwjs is as follows:

cd ~/
mkdir bin
cd bin

wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v14.4.0/node-v14.4.0-linux-x64.tar.xz
tar xvf node-v14.4.0-linux-x64.tar.xz
ln -s node-v14.4.0-linux-x64 node

wget https://dl.nwjs.io/v0.46.2/nwjs-sdk-v0.46.2-linux-x64.tar.gz
tar xvf nwjs-sdk-v0.46.2-linux-x64.tar.gz
ln -s nwjs-sdk-v0.46.2-linux-x64 nwjs

Once done add the following to ~/.bashrc

export PATH="~/bin/node/bin:~/bin/nwjs:${PATH}"

The above method allows you to deploy latest binaries and manage versions by re-targeting symlinks pointing to target folders. Once you have node and nwjs working, you can continue with Spectre Desktop.

git clone https://github.com/spectre-project/spectre-desktop
cd spectre-desktop
npm install
npm install emanator@latest
node_modules/.bin/emanate --local-binaries
nw .

Building installers from specific Spectre Git branches

The --branch argument specifies common branch name for Spectre, for example:

node_modules/.bin/emanate --branch=main

The branch for each repository can be overriden using --branch-<repo-name>=<branch-name> arguments as follows:

emanate --branch=main --branch-spectred=main

Spectre Desktop Process Manager

Configuration

Spectre Desktop runtime configuration is declared using a JSON object.

Each instance of the process is declared using it's type (for example: spectred) and a unique identifier (sd0). Most process configuration objects support args property that allows passing arguments or configuration options directly to the process executable. The configuration is passed via configuration file (spectred).

Supported process types:

• spectred - Spectre full node

NOTE: For Spectre, to specify multiple connection endpoints, you must use an array of addresses as follows: "args" : { "connect" : [ "peer-addr-port-a", "peer-addr-port-b", ...] }

Default Configuration File

{
	"description": "Spectred Node",
	"modules": {
		"spectred:sd0": {
			"reset-peers": false,
			"args": {
				"rpclisten": "0.0.0.0:18110",
				"listen": "0.0.0.0:18111",
				"profile": 8310
			},
			"upnpEnabled": true
		}
	},
	"ident": "spectred-node-only",
	"network": "mainnet",
	"upnpEnabled": true,
	"dataDir": "",
	"theme": "light",
	"invertTerminals": false,
	"compounding": {
		"auto": false,
		"useLatestAddress": false
	}
}

Data Storage

Spectre Desktop stores it's configuration file as ~/.spectre-desktop/config.json. Each configured process data is stored in <datadir>/<process-type>-<process-identifier> where datadir is a user-configurable location. The default datadir location is ~/.spectre-desktop/data/. For example, spectred process with identifier sd0 will be stored in ~/.spectre-desktop/data/spectred-sd0/ and it's logs in ~/.spectre-desktop/data/spectred-sd0/logs/spectred.log.

Spectre Binaries

Spectre Desktop can run Spectre from two locations:

1. From integrated bin folder that is included with Spectre Desktop redistributables.
2. Fron ~/.spectre-desktop/bin folder that is created during the Spectre build process.