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Comment by 3np | Hacker News Reader

This can be an issue if building it is a hassle.

I just built the desktop app in <5min by checking it out and running:

  make prebuild; make linux-app

Substitute linux with win-wpf or mac. They also provide both linux and windows binaries from their GH releases.

It's only for OS X they do not provide a compiled binary, which you can presumably build easily.

Given that, it's quite entitled to say it's "working solely on app stores".

I'm not Mattermost, but if I made a desktop project in the future I probably wouldn't bother with providing OS X binaries for each release either (I'm a bit out of the loop on what the latest is but doesn't it require Apple hardware and/or a provisioned dev cert even for "sideloaded" apps these days? Is it as straightforward to set up in CI as normal builds?)

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I’m just a user for whom “building” is too much of a burden. When this was posted, I went to the website to see if I could download the standalone desktop version for Windows. Since I knew that the lack of this was something I had experienced and commented on in the past, I was able to find the issue and see how it was (poorly, IMO) handled. Someone else may have just given up. How many users (not programmers) would even bother to go to GitHub to hunt for binaries for Windows or macOS? The Windows binaries seem to be on GitHub but there is no link on the site’s marketing page. It seems very shortsighted to not provide the links on the main site.

I also don’t think it’s entitlement to give feedback on open source projects, which typically have better feedback mechanisms and acceptance from external sources than from commercial vendors. It seems obvious now that Mattermost has other priorities and doesn’t know how and when to close tickets.

Hi, Focalboard team here! Thanks for the feedback! The missing link on the website was an oversight, and it's been fixed there (https://www.focalboard.com/download/personal-edition/desktop...) and in the readme, which is usually most up to date (https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard).

We published to the App Stores to see if that would lower the barrier to adoption. We learned that that while they are convenient for most folks, some can't access them, in particular the Windows Store, due to firewalls, corp policy, etc. So far, this seems to be a bigger problem for Windows than Mac in general.

To be transparent, we want to automate all the App Store publishing. It is currently a semi-manual process. It turns out that the Microsoft Store process is easiest (mostly uploading an MSIX file, which they sign for you). Signing for the Mac App Store was brittle for us, and became more manual. Notarizing for standalone builds has additional steps on top of that. Hopefully, Xcode Cloud will eventually solve all these problems.

BTW, another easier way to build might be to fork and use the GitHub actions:

1. Fork the Focalboard repo

2. Go to the Prod-Release Action in your fork (https://github.com/YOURID/focalboard/actions/workflows/prod-...)

3. Enable it if needed (the first time)

4. Run

5. Download the generated packages

I haven't seen this widely used, but might be a great way to try out new projects initially.

GP here. This is a late reply. As a user who cannot go through build processes and prefers direct downloads, I’d still like to see direct download links on the main site’s pages for the Windows and macOS versions (in addition to the app store links).

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