split electron-builder config to a separate file from build script

[selfisekai]

Title

Pull Request Type

• Bugfix
• Feature Implementation
• Documentation
• Other

Related issue

Description

allows to use electron-tasje instead of _scripts/build.js (tasje --config ./_scripts/ebuilder.js pack).

Screenshots

Testing

manually

Desktop

• OS:
• OS Version:
• FreeTube version:

Additional context

typical distro policies disallow packaging prebuilt binaries, in this case of electron (e.g. https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/what-can-be-packaged/#prebuilt-binaries-or-libraries). tasje takes an electron-builder config and packages the app without downloading anything

[absidue]

Just a warning that if you aren't going to use the pre-bundled electron, make sure that you lock the version in the distro dependency to the same major version the FreeTube uses. Both AUR and NixOS made the mistake of not ensuring that the version is the same and then ended up with completely broken FreeTube installs (crashing and sitting on a blank window forever).

We don't do releases very often, so it's not uncommon for FreeTube to be a few major versions of Electron behind the latest version and major versions come with breaking changes. So while it might work completely fine in your testing now, it might just "suddenly" break one day, when your distro decides to upgrade it's version of Electron.

[absidue]

Could you please add the word config to the name of this file, as ebuilder doesn't indicate it's purpose very well on it's own.

[selfisekai]

in Alpine Linux I'm the maintainer of the electron package, every app gets rebuilt with a major version upgrade of electron

[absidue]

Rebuilding alone is not enough, you also need to make sure that the version of Electron in the package.json matches up with the one you are running it on and make sure that the app code doesn't use any removed APIs.

So unless you are planning on doing extensive testing on FreeTube every time you upgrade Electron, please lock the version. The fact that you describe your own tasje tool in it's README as absolutely terrible for app developers, does not inspire me with confidence that we won't have to deal with another AUR or NixOS situation again, because when stuff breaks, people come to us first.

[selfisekai]

Rebuilding alone is not enough, you also need to make sure that the version of Electron in the package.json matches up with the one you are running it on and make sure that the app code doesn't use any removed APIs.

the buildscripts are also adjusted to use our node headers, packaged together with the electron. this has failed build-time, delaying electron updates (like now), but so far never on runtime

[absidue]

Please either lock the version or do extensive testing before releasing Electron upgrades, because when you break FreeTube people come to us first, not you. I'm sure that both the AUR and NixOS maintainers had the same confidence that you have, but they still ended up breaking stuff with upgrading Electron to version that FreeTube didn't support.

[PikachuEXE]

yarn build:arm64 works fine