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{"version":3,"sources":["webpack:///path---hybrid-electron-application-deployment-in-the-enterprise-2e2e43c2843eaeed9acf.js","webpack:///./.cache/json/hybrid-electron-application-deployment-in-the-enterprise.json"],"names":["webpackJsonp","533","module","exports","data","site","siteMetadata","title","markdownRemark","id","html","frontmatter","date","author","bio","avatar","childImageSharp","resolutions","tracedSVG","width","height","src","srcSet","pathContext","slug","previous","fields","next"],"mappings":"AAAAA,cAAc,iBAERC,IACA,SAAUC,EAAQC,GCHxBD,EAAAC,SAAkBC,MAAQC,MAAQC,cAAgBC,MAAA,4BAAmCC,gBAAmBC,GAAA,sIAAAC,KAAA,msLAA4fC,aAAw2KJ,MAAA,2DAAAK,KAAA,iBAAAC,QAAqGJ,GAAA,aAAAK,IAAA,wHAAAC,QAA0JC,iBAAmBC,aAAeC,UAAA,mnBAAAC,MAAA,GAAAC,OAAA,GAAAC,IAAA,0DAAAC,OAAA,6PAA29BC,aAAgBC,KAAA,2DAAAC,UAA8EC,QAAUF,KAAA,sCAA4Cb,aAAgBJ,MAAA,uCAA8CoB,MAASD,QAAUF,KAAA,sCAA4Cb,aAAgBJ,MAAA","file":"path---hybrid-electron-application-deployment-in-the-enterprise-2e2e43c2843eaeed9acf.js","sourcesContent":["webpackJsonp([125210007625489],{\n\n/***/ 533:\n/***/ (function(module, exports) {\n\n\tmodule.exports = {\"data\":{\"site\":{\"siteMetadata\":{\"title\":\"Engineering at MindLink\"}},\"markdownRemark\":{\"id\":\"/Applications/AzureDevOpsAgent/_work/13/s/src/pages/19-03-14-hybrid-electron-deployment/index.md absPath of file >>> MarkdownRemark\",\"html\":\"<p>Enterprises love control, that usually means they’re only going to install your software if there’s an MSI package that they can deploy through group policy.</p>\\n<p>This means that if you want a lovely auto-updating client so that you don’t have to maintain backwards compatible server code you’re <em>stuck</em>. 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Thats why we <em>really</em> want to avoid it in the server.</p>\\n<h2>The modern deployment approach</h2>\\n<p>Modern client deployment techniques follow an auto-update process. If you’re trying to use a really old WhatsApp then it’ll force you to install the latest update. Mobile apps and associated app stores have instilled this approach into consumers, and the same trend is happening on desktops with most services now in the cloud. Maintaining a cloud service that has to be compatible with many different client versions is an engineering overhead best avoided.</p>\\n<p>The classic auto-update approach is to replace the native installation. 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If there’s a customer that is slow to deploy a new version, we don’t want all our other customers not getting the latest and greatest client.</p>\\n<p>This means that we don’t need a backwards compatible server, and that’s brilliant because that keeps code lean and up to date.</p>\\n<p>However, when we looked to package up our web app as a desktop application, suddenly we found a backwards compatible client is not enough. In an enterprise deployment often its the other way around, servers are updated first and then clients.</p>\\n<p>That means we either need to also maintain a backwards compatible server, or find a way to keep clients in-sync.</p>\\n<p>We know first hand the pain of keeping legacy code around for backwards compatibility - the choices available aren’t great when you’re talking about behavioural differences. 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That’s great if you’re installing into user-space, but in an Enterprise world the app is natively installed and sysadmins don’t want an automatically installed native package that they haven’t got deployment control over.</p>\\n<p>You could implement a native bootloader instead, so you pull down a native payload in the bootloader and then launch that. There are security concerns around this approach and it’s possible that the native code execution is blocked by some security policy.</p>\\n<p>However there is a middle ground - do exactly what a browser does. After all, Enterprises don’t stop browsers from loading web sites or apps (provided they’re not blacklisted)!</p>\\n<h2>The idea</h2>\\n<p>In the Electron world you’re basically a browser renderer and engine without the native interop built-in (you implement those bits yourself). 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It would slow the release of new features and mean we’d have to maintain both a backwards compatible server and backwards compatible client - much nicer not to have to worry about that!</p>\\n<p>This proposal is still being finalised and isn’t live yet. However, this approach essentially amounts to what a browser does, the only difference is we’re exposing some extra APIs for our “web app” to leverage.</p>\",\"frontmatter\":{\"title\":\"Hybrid Electron application deployment in the enterprise\",\"date\":\"March 14, 2019\",\"author\":{\"id\":\"Luke Terry\",\"bio\":\"Senior Engineer at MindLink. 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