Karlsen Desktop is a dedicated desktop process manager for Karlsen node.

Karlsen Desktop process configuration (available via a simple JSON editor) allows user to specify command-line arguments for executables, as such it is possible to configure it to run multiple instances of Karlsen or potentially run multiple networks simultaneously (provided Karlsen nodes do not pro-actively auto-discover each-other).

Like many desktop applications, Karlsen Desktop can run in the tray bar, out of the way.

Karlsen Desktop is built using NWJS and is compatible Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

• Node.js 14.0.0+
• Emanator

NOTE: Karlsen Desktop build process builds and includes latest Karlsen binaries from Git master branches. To build from specific branches, you can use --branch... flags (see below).

To build and deploy Karlsen Desktop production-ready builds, do the following:

mkdir karlsen-build
cd karlsen-build
npm install emanator@latest
git clone https://github.com/karlsen-network/karlsen-desktop
cd karlsen-desktop

Emanator will help to create standalone desktop applications using NWJS. It accepts the following flags:

• --portable will create a portable zipped application.
• --innosetup will generate Windows setup executable.
• --dmg will generate a DMG image for macOS.
• --all will generate all OS compatible packages.

Additionally the following flags can be used to reset the environment:

• --clean clean build folders: purges cloned GOPATH folder
• --reset deletes downloaded/cached NWJS and NODE binaries

The --clean and --reset can be combined to cleanup build folder and cached files.

DMG - Building DMG images on macOS requires sudo access in order to use system tools such as diskutil to generate images:

sudo ../node_modules/.bin/emanate build --dmg

To build the Windows portable deployment, run the following command:

../node_modules/.bin/emanate build --archive --portable

To build the Windows installer, you need to install Innosetup and run:

../node_modules/.bin/emanate build --innosetup

Emanator stores build files in the ~/emanator folder.

In addition to Node.js (must be 14.0+), please download and install Latest NWJS SDK https://nwjs.io - make sure that nw executable is available in the system PATH and that you can run nw from command line.

On Linux / Darwin, as good way to install node and nwjs is as follows:

cd ~/
mkdir bin
cd bin

wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v14.4.0/node-v14.4.0-linux-x64.tar.xz
tar xvf node-v14.4.0-linux-x64.tar.xz
ln -s node-v14.4.0-linux-x64 node

wget https://dl.nwjs.io/v0.46.2/nwjs-sdk-v0.46.2-linux-x64.tar.gz
tar xvf nwjs-sdk-v0.46.2-linux-x64.tar.gz
ln -s nwjs-sdk-v0.46.2-linux-x64 nwjs

Once done add the following to ~/.bashrc

export PATH="~/bin/node/bin:~/bin/nwjs:${PATH}"

The above method allows you to deploy latest binaries and manage versions by re-targeting symlinks pointing to target folders. Once you have node and nwjs working, you can continue with Karlsen Desktop.

Karlsen Desktop installation:

git clone https://github.com/karlsen-network/karlsen-desktop
cd karlsen-desktop
npm install
npm install emanator@latest
node_modules/.bin/emanate --local-binaries
nw .

The --branch argument specifies common branch name for Karlsen, for example:

node_modules/.bin/emanate --branch=2024_initial_karlsen_support

The branch for each repository can be overriden using --branch-<repo-name>=<branch-name> arguments as follows:

emanate --branch=2024_initial_karlsen_support --branch-karlsend=2024_fixes_next

Karlsen Desktop runtime configuration is declared using a JSON object.

Each instance of the process is declared using it's type (for example: karlsend) and a unique identifier (kd0). Most process configuration objects support args property that allows passing arguments or configuration options directly to the process executable. The configuration is passed via configuration file (karlsend).

Supported process types:

• karlsend - Karlsen full node

NOTE: For Karlsen, to specify multiple connection endpoints, you must use an array of addresses as follows: "args" : { "connect" : [ "peer-addr-port-a", "peer-addr-port-b", ...] }

{
	"description": "Karlsend Node",
	"modules": {
		"karlsend:kd0": {
			"reset-peers": false,
			"args": {
				"rpclisten": "0.0.0.0:42110",
				"listen": "0.0.0.0:42111",
				"profile": 8110
			},
			"upnpEnabled": true
		}
	},
	"ident": "karlsend-node-only",
	"network": "mainnet",
	"upnpEnabled": true,
	"dataDir": "",
	"theme": "light",
	"invertTerminals": false,
	"compounding": {
		"auto": false,
		"useLatestAddress": false
	}
}

Karlsen Desktop stores it's configuration file as ~/.karlsen-desktop/config.json. Each configured process data is stored in <datadir>/<process-type>-<process-identifier> where datadir is a user-configurable location. The default datadir location is ~/.karlsen-desktop/data/. For example, karlsend process with identifier kd0 will be stored in ~/.karlsen-desktop/data/karlsend-kd0/ and it's logs in ~/.karlsen-desktop/data/karlsend-kd0/logs/karlsend.log.

Karlsen Desktop can run Karlsen from two locations:

1. From integrated bin folder that is included with Karlsen Desktop redistributables.
2. Fron ~/.karlsen-desktop/bin folder that is created during the Karlsen build process.