How to do development of the core of nRF Connect for Desktop

Developing the core of nRF Connect for Desktop is a bit different than developing an app for it.

As you have read in the architecture summary the core is split up over two projects: pc-nrfconnect-launcher and pc-nrfconnect-shared.

These projects are responsible for multiple things. So there could be several motivations for working on it: Most probably you want to change the launcher or code that is common for the apps.

Prerequisites

Besides the general prerequisites you may need some additional ones for developing the core:

Linux

Install additionally required packages for building the project on Ubuntu Linux:

apt-get install build-essential python2.7 libudev-dev libgconf-2-4

Windows

Install additionally required tools and configurations using Microsoft’s windows-build-tools from an elevated PowerShell or CMD.exe (run as Administrator):

npm install --global --production windows-build-tools

macOS

With macOS you already should have everything installed when you fulfill the general prerequisites.

Running the launcher from source

Fetch the source from https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-nrfconnect-launcher and like on most Node.js projects, you need to install the dependencies once at the beginning with npm install and only need to repeat that later if the dependencies change.

Start the continuous compilation by running:

npm run watch:build

This will transpile and bundle all code into the dist directory. The process will watch for changes to source code, and re-bundle to dist on each change.

Now, open a separate terminal window and run:

npm run app

This will open Electron, which loads its content from dist. This instance also uses the apps it finds in your ~/.nrfconnect-apps directory. Thus if you also have a binary installation of nRF Connect for Desktop or develop local apps, the same apps will show up in this instance too.

Developing common code in pc-nrfconnect-shared

Development of pc-nrfconnect-shared is usually only done by the core nRF Connect for Desktop team, but everyone is welcome to propose changes to it.

It contains a Changelog where the “Steps to upgrade when using this package” sections are especially important to read when upgrading to newer versions. Generally it is recommended to stay up-to-date with the version of pc-nrfconnect-shared you are using, esp. new releases of the launcher might require that all apps are updated to a certain version of it.