Copay can be executed from within a "native" application shell, providing some additional features such as native menus, notifications, tray integration, etc. This is accomplished using Atom Shell.
To run and test Copay from within this context, first download the atom-shell
package to shell/bin/{platform} (ignored by git), by running:
npm run setup-shell
Once this script has completed, you can launch the shell-based Copay by running:
npm run shell
npm run dist
This script will download atom shell binaries and combine them with Copay sources to build a DMG for osx-x64, an installer EXE for win32, and a .tar.gz for linux-x64. It was developed to be run on OSX. The outputs are copied to the dist directory.
DMG is created with hdiutil EXE is created with makensis (brew install makensis)
To add features that enhance the native experience of Copay, first follow the directions above under "Running in the Native Shell". It's important to ensure that functionality within this context should either hook into existing features or supplement the experience of those features. Copay should continue to operate full-featured from within a modern web browser.
Shell functionality works by sending and receiving messages between the Copay
application and the shell wrapper. Native functionality should be handled mostly
from within shell/lib/message-handler.js, which receives messages conditionally
from the front-end Angular controllers.
Look at js/shell.js to see how we determine if Copay is running from within the
native shell context. If we are running within the shell, Copay has access to the
global variable window.cshell, which provides access to the messenger. For
instance, to Copay might want to use a native dialog alert in favor of a regular
one if running in this context. You would do this like so:
if (window.cshell) {
window.cshell.send('alert', 'info', 'Please select a wallet.');
}
else {
window.alert('Please select a wallet.');
}