CodeAlpha.MVT.PoC

In preparation to build a Minimum Viable Test (MVT) later this year, this project is a technical Proof of Concept (PoC).

Technical Details

Building and running the application

• Install Rust using rustup and NOT homebrew!

  # from: https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install
  
  ❯ curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
  ❯ source "$HOME/.cargo/env"
  ❯ rustc --version
    rustc 1.63.0 (4b91a6ea7 2022-08-08)
  

• Before building for the first time, run

  softwareupdate --install-rosetta
  

  to install Rosetta (if on Darwin architecture)

1. npm install installs all JS dependencies
2. npm run tauri dev builds both frontend and backend, and starts the application. It also opens the native Developer Tools window for debugging.

Architecture

The application is built on Tauri, a framework for multi-platform development.

• Tauri allows a clean separation of frontend and backend in a desktop application; the frontend is written in TypeScript and the backend is written in Rust.
• Tauri has a much smaller memory footprint than Electron, the largest competitor in this space.

Frontend

The frontend is built in TypeScript, with Svelte and TailwindCSS.

Backend

src-tauri/src contains the Rust backend, organized into the following modules:

• ax_interaction: The interface of the application with the native accessibility UIs.
• core_engine: Core business logic, completely agnostic about enviroment and operating system.
• window_controls: Funtionality for rendering, including the code_overlay.

Communication between these modules is event-driven, as is communication between the backend and frontend, by serializing and de-serializing structs to JSON.

The shared interfaces between the frontend and backend are generated from Rust structs with the TS annotation, and exported to TypeScript interfaces in src-tauri/bindings/, where they can be imported by the frontend. This is provided by ts-rs

CI/CD

This repository uses GitHub Actions on self-hosted hardware. To set up your development machine to run these, follow this guide: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/hosting-your-own-runners/adding-self-hosted-runners

To set up machine to be a runner:

• Make sure Xcode is installed in /Applications; otherwise, notarization will not work (error message: xcrun altool not found)
• Make sure to set the environment variables:
  • TAURI_PRIVATE_KEY (get from GCP secret manager)
  • TAURI_KEY_PASSWORD (get from GCP secret manager)
  • APPLE_ID =
  • APPLE_PASSWORD
  • APPLE_CERTIFICATE
  • APPLE_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD
  • ENABLE_CODE_SIGNING (set this to anything)
  • Follow the instructions at https://github.com/codealphadev/CodeAlpha.MVT.PoC/settings/actions/runners/new to set up your machine as a runner
  • Install the certificate on your machine (whoever generates it needs to follow the guide at https://tauri.app/v1/guides/distribution/sign-macos)