Update testing

Sometimes it might be necessary to test the update flow of the desktop application. This document will attempt to describe how to do so in detail.

The desktop applications are published to our GitHub page, which we can’t really do for development purposes. To provide a fairly similar environment, we run a local S3 simulator which lets us simulate a S3 provider environment.

While this is not identical to our scenarios it will still allow us to test the UI and updating process without messing around in a GitHub repo.

Preparation

Start the minio docker container using docker compose up in scripts/dev.
Add a read-only bucket called update, by going to http://localhost:9001 and login using minioadmin/minioadmin, click Create bucket fill in the details. Then click Manage, Access Rules and fill in the following details.

Modify the electron-builder.json with the following publish settings.

"publish" : {
    "provider": "s3",
    "endpoint": "http://127.0.0.1:9000",
    "bucket": "update"
},

Create .aws/credentials inside the Users home directory (Windows: C:\Users\username, Linux: ~/) with the following content
```
[default]
aws_access_key_id=minioadmin
aws_secret_access_key=minioadmin
```

Update

Generate a local build using npm run publish:win:dev
Install the build within dist/nsis-web/Bitwarden-Installer-1.32.0.exe
Update the version number in src/package.json
Publish the new version using: npm run publish:win:dev
The app should now prompt for an update.

Note: This can also be done on Linux, just use npm run publish:lin for steps 1 and 4.

Preparation​

Update​

Preparation

Update