easy app installs

[zeke]

One-Line

electron-forge has an install command that takes a user/repo string and automatically installs an app for you:

$ electron-forge install andrepolischuk/thomas 
✔ Checking your system
✔ Searching for Releases
Found latest release: v0.4.1
Downloading andrepolischuk-thomas-v0.4.1-Thomas-macos-0.4.1.zip
[============================================>] 100.0% of 47.23 MB (1.3 MB/s)
✔ Installing Application

This reduces friction, and requires less interaction from a user to actually install an app on their machine.

We should considering adding a copy-paste-able $ electron-forge install andrepolischuk/thomas one-liner on app pages that have a GitHub repo.

One-Click

Stretch goal! Make an Electron app that registers a custom protocol like electron:// or similar, and also runs a server on localhost. The website can then make a request to the localhost on the expected port, and if it gets a response, then display a link that will magically trigger an app installation.

cc @MarshallOfSound who implemented forge's install command.

[zeke]

Zeit use their Now app for a similar purpose: it's always running in the menu bar, keeping the now CLI up to date automatically.

[zeke]

For apps that have a homebrewCaskName, give that precedence because brew-installed apps can be udpated. Forge-installed apps cannot.

[zeke]

Semi-related: https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/16453

[zeke]

@vanessayuenn mentioned this today in the website meeting: https://github.com/ismailhabib/custom-protocol-detection