Desktop App Setup

Once your course is set up, you’ll likely want students using the desktop app instead of (or alongside) the browser. There’s no separate “download an installer” step — building the installer is the setup, because the backend URL your students’ app will talk to gets baked into the package when it’s built. There’s no way to point an already-built installer at a different server afterward, so build it once your course’s backend URL is final.

What you need

  • JDK 21 and the repo’s Gradle wrapper (./gradlew) — see Local setup for the full prerequisites if you’re setting this up for the first time.
  • The CS30 source checked out, since packaging is a Gradle task run from the repo root.

1. Point the build at your backend

Set cs30.backend.url in application.properties (repo root) to your course’s actual backend URL — not localhost. The desktop app reads this once, at build time; it is not something a student’s installed app checks again later.

2. Build the installer for your OS

Run the package task for the OS you’re targeting, from the repo root:

./gradlew :frontend:packageDmg    # macOS   -> frontend/build/compose/binaries/main/dmg/
./gradlew :frontend:packageMsi    # Windows
./gradlew :frontend:packageDeb    # Linux

jpackage doesn’t cross-compile, so build each installer on a machine running that OS. Students don’t need Java, Gradle, or any of this installed themselves — the JRE is bundled into the package.

3. Distribute it

Hand the resulting installer file to your students (or lab machines) however you normally distribute software — a shared drive, your course site, USB, etc. Installing it is a normal double-click install on each platform; no configuration is needed on the student’s end.

If you need to change the backend URL later

Repeat steps 1–3 with the new URL and redistribute. Existing installs will keep pointing at the old URL until replaced.

For troubleshooting or more detail on the underlying build, see Local setup’s “Packaging the desktop app” section — that page is the full technical reference this one summarizes.