arch-atom

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Electron apps are usually packaged with asar, as explained here.

In Atom we disabled it because the package asar-require didn't work with new Node. This has been fixed in version 0.2.1 of the package, which has been adopted since apm-1.12.4, making it now possible to pack the Atom app (the /usr/lib/atom folder) into a single .asar file.

pros

• slightly faster startup time.

cons

• obfuscated source code.

I'd like to hear the opinions of people following.

I don't have a strong opinion, but if you decide to use asar, then please create a package for the 'asar' command-line tool, so users could easily unpack asar archives if they want.

:+1: I fully supported the switch to asar. Atom is naturally a slow loader, so anything we can do to improve its startup time, even slightly, I think will be worth it.

Are the builds reproduceable with that tool?

@rumpelsepp I pretty sure they are, but I'll verify it. Asar is an archiving tool, similar to tar, but it also generates an index to speedup random access without having to unpack.