Client: Aragon modules and the web version

[onbjerg]

Aragon will support 3rd party modules at some point, but it does not seem to be possible for the web version.

Since the front-end part modules are written in JavaScript and should be easily integrated into the ÐApp, it would make sense that the Aragon "app store" displays certain Node.js packages from the npm registry (e.g. based on certain tags).

However, since modules would require npm in this case, and since npm does not run in the browser, this makes the web version impossible (at least with modules).

Furthermore, modules may leverage certain Node.js APIs that would not be translateable to the browser.

This puts the plans for modules in Aragon at a sort of crossroads. There are severals paths:

• Aragon will be desktop only
• Aragon will install modules in some other way
• Aragon will be desktop and web, but the web version will not support 3rd party modules

Do you have any thoughts on this?

[stefek99]

However, since modules would require npm in this case, and since npm does not run in the browser, this makes the web version impossible (at least with modules).

Get your npm modules in the browser: http://browserify.org/

If you can't be bothered to build yourself, here is the "on the fly" service: https://wzrd.in/

[onbjerg]

@stefek99 This would require people to rebuild the app every time they install a 3rd party module.

The issue is not bundling modules at build time, it's bundling them at run-time.

[onbjerg]

But @luisivan seemed to have an initial sketch down for some plans, though, using IPFS and IPNS for modules.

[stefek99]

@onbjerg

since npm does not run in the browser

~p => q

I just wanted to challenge the assumption.

---

Bundling them at run-time... If you do npm install then you fetch modules from npm and store them locally and use the same version until you update package.json?

[onbjerg]

I just wanted to challenge the assumption.

Even with browserify npm still does not run in the browser 😄

If you do npm install then you fetch modules from npm and store them locally and use the same version until you update package.json?

Yes, but Aragon is going to have something like an app store. It won't be feasible to bundle all of the 3rd party apps at build time if the end user is not going to install all of them, so it would make sense only to install the ones the user wants to install. This is hard to do in the web version.

But as I said, I had this discussions with Luis on Slack and he had some ideas using IPFS and IPNS to solve this.

[stefek99]

Aragon is going to have something like an app store

I saw the architectural diagram somewhere but cannot locate it now.

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aragon/whitepaper/master/Aragon%20Whitepaper.pdf
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aragon/docs/master/Aragon-Development-Plan.pdf

What are your views about mobile?

(till this day even Chrome does not support extensions on mobile - I treat Chrome as an ultimate piece of engineering)

Aragon will be desktop only
Aragon will install modules in some other way
Aragon will be desktop and web, but the web version will not support 3rd party modules

[stefek99]

What are your views about mobile?

https://status.im/

Bottom line - when discussing web architecture please consider mobile use case as well 🙏

[onbjerg]

I'd probably implement mobile in the current app provided there's design for it. The goal is to support Aragon in Status as well, and currently it _does_ work, but it's not optimal.

I'm sure mobile is planned.

[luisivan]

It should be easy to support Status, since our design is planned around interface segments (there are always 3 segments on the desktop version). We gotta think about the module system though. We'll start bouncing off ideas to a doc, building the first version of the spec.

[luisivan]

I will close this for now, since consensus is that all modules/apps should be previously minified web apps that we can directly load from an _index.html_, so we abstract over the developer's workflow and tools