Making packages¶

1. I need to express something that's awkward in HOCON¶

Write the config in any language you like and then use a hashbang include. For example, grab yaml2json or jsonnet and then just put something like this in your conveyor.conf:

1	`include "#!jsonnet conveyor.jsonnet"`

Conveyor will run jsonnet conveyor.jsonnet and treat the output as if it was an included file. Because HOCON is a superset of JSON, anything that produces JSON can be used in this way.

2. Can I define URL handlers or file associations?¶

Not yet, but these are both high priority features. For now, try modifying the configuration of the operating-system specific metadata via your config. For example, the generated Info.plist file on macOS is fully definable in configuration, same for the .desktop file on Linux and so on.

3. Why aren't I seeing icons show up?¶

Make sure you provide icon images at the full range of sizes. Conveyor won't currently rescale icons if you don't provide enough of them. In particular, note that the biggest icon size Windows supports is 256x256 so if you only provide an image larger than that, you won't get any icons.

4. How do I do a new version for every commit?¶

Something like:

app {
    // Get the number of commits in the current branch.
    include "#!=revision git rev-list --count --first-parent HEAD"
}

and then just trigger Conveyor from your CI system. This is an example of a hashbang include.

Revision numbers vs commit hashes

Note that revision must be a number. You can't set it to be a commit hash. This is because package managers don't generally allow non-integer versions, and for Windows and macOS this is a hard rule.

5. How do I display a license agreement at install time?¶

You can't. It's not idiomatic on macOS, impossible on Linux and not well supported by MSIX on Windows. Ask the user to agree in your app on first run instead.