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Alby Companion app

The Alby companion app allows Alby to connect to nodes that run behind Tor or are otherwise not easily accessible on the public clearnet internet.
It serves as native companion app for the Alby lightning browser extension. The browser extension uses the browser's native messaging to talk to this native app.

NOTE: Typically the user does not manually install this app. The download link and instructions will be provided directly from the extension when they connect their node. Alternatively the user can use an app package for macOS, Windows or Linux

Build

In the project folder, run:

cargo build --release

OSX:

cargo build --release --target x86_64-apple-darwin
cargo build --release --target aarch64-apple-darwin
lipo target/aarch64-apple-darwin/release/alby target/x86_64-apple-darwin/release/alby -create -output alby

with this you'll get an universal executable in ./alby You can use the ./build-macos.sh script to run the build and create a release zip file.

Debug

Temporary directory might be generated in a folder with random (unique) name, so for debug you might want to run the app with "--debug" flag:

cargo run -- --debug

In this mode you'll get the log file name.

When running as a native companion app check the log file and if the process is running.

tail -f $TMPDIR/alby.log

Command-line options

• --log-file, --log_file, --l - string;
• --tor-dir, --tor_dir, --t - string;
• --debug - presence of this flag will turn on the debug mode.

Run with option

Executable:

/some/folder/alby --log-file=/tmp/alby.log

Debug:

cargo run -- --log-file=/tmp/alby.log

Development Setup Notes

MacOS

You'll need Homebrew and installed Rust.

brew install openssl gcc libevent autoconf automake    

Linux

Ubuntu Dependencies

• build-essential, autoconf, libssl-dev
• rustup

Install the companion app for Alby

NOTE: Typically the user does not manually install this app but uses an app package like for macOS or Windows

Firefox

1. build the companion app (cargo build --release)
2. copy the manifest-firefox.json example to the Firefox NativeMessagingHosts folder of your system (see below)
3. edit the path in that alby.json file and profile the full absolute path to your alby executable.

More information: Mozilla docs

Folder for the manifest file

• OSX: ~/Library/Application Support/Mozilla/NativeMessagingHosts/alby.json
• Linux: ~/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/alby.json
• Windows: Create a Registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\NativeMessagingHosts\alby with the default value as path to the manifest json file

More details: WebExtensions/Native_manifests

Chrome

1. build the companion app (cargo build --release)
2. copy the manifest-chome.json example to the Chrome NativeMessagingHosts folder of your system (see below)
3. edit the path in that alby.json file and profile the full absolute path to your alby executable
4. make sure the extension ID is correct in that alby.json file (it must end with a /)

More information: Chome docs

Folder for the manifest file

• OSX: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/NativeMessagingHosts/alby.json
• Linux: ~/.config/google-chrome/NativeMessagingHosts/alby.json
• Windows: see here

More details: WebExtensions/Native_manifests