OpenAsar

Open-source alternative of Discord desktop's app.asar OpenAsar is currently made of ~80% own code, with the rest being from Discord as it hasn't been rewritten yet or because of compatibility reasons.

Goals

• Hotpluggable - just swap the asar file, nothing else needed
• Lightweight - it should be at least as fast or lightweight, hopefully more
• No Tracking - no crash reporting or error tracking (in normal Discord)
• Minimal - generally only doing what is needed
• Patch Platform - provide a platform for future patching

Implementation

Below is a list in order of priority, marked as complete when finished:

• Bootstrapping
• Splash screen
• Error handling
• A bunch of specific minor fixes / features
  • Handle hardware acceleration
• Auto start
• First run
• Self-write some small parts of internals
• Patch updater to survive host updates
• Self-write updater code (currently mostly copied)
• Compatibility / replication of original Discord splash?

Config

You can configure OpenAsar via settings.json (found in your Discord app data / user data), under a openasar object. Keep in mind most options are defaults for good reason, they may temporarily brick your client until you revert your changes. The avaliable options are:

• quickstart (bool) - enables Quickstart (experimental)
• skipStartupUpdateChecks (bool) - skips startup update checking (Linux-only)

An example of a settings.json with OpenAsar config:

{
  "BACKGROUND_COLOR": "#202225",
  "IS_MAXIMIZED": false,
  "IS_MINIMIZED": false,
  "WINDOW_BOUNDS": {
    "x": 801,
    "y": 22,
    "width": 797,
    "height": 876
  },
  "MINIMIZE_TO_TRAY": false,
  "OPEN_ON_STARTUP": false,
  "openasar": {
    "quickstart": true
  }
}

Custom Patches

Custom patches are another main goal of OpenAsar, patching enhancements where otherwise impossible to do so with traditional mods. Our current ideas for patches to do:

• Skipping checking for updates on startup
• Linux host app updating

Install Guide

OpenAsar is heavily disrecommened due to it being in early development.

1. Clone repo
2. NPM install in src dir (cd src; npm i)
3. Pack into app.asar via asar NPM package - asar pack src app.asar
4. Backup your original app.asar (rename to app.asar.backup / etc)
5. Install OpenAsar app.asar into the original path