Building Signal Desktop on Fedora
In 2020-03-29 this guide was re-written from an old method and spec file to a new one fetched from here.
Here's how I build my own RPM for Signal Desktop. This guide has been evolving since Fedora 28, and last tested on Fedora 35.
Why?
The Signal org provides no official RPM and I don't trust 3rd parties building their own so I go through this process every time I need to update Signal Desktop.
Setup rpmbuild
Pick somwhere to build your RPMs, I've picked $HOME/src/rpmbuild and hard coded that into my .rpmmacros file. So it looks like this.
%_topdir %(echo $HOME)/src/rpmbuild
%_tmppath %(echo $HOME)/src/rpmbuild/tmp
%__arch_install_post \
[ "%{buildarch}" = "noarch" ] || QA_CHECK_RPATHS=1 ; \
case "${QA_CHECK_RPATHS:-}" in [1yY]*) /usr/lib/rpm/check-rpaths ;; esac \
/usr/lib/rpm/check-buildroot
mkdir -p $HOME/src/rpmbuild
mkdir $HOME/src/rpmbuild/{SPECS,SOURCES}
Download SPEC and SOURCE for Signal
Clone the git repo with the SPEC and patch files
mkdir $HOME/src
cd $HOME/src
git clone https://github.com/negativo17/Signal-Desktop
cp Signal-Desktop/*.spec ~/src/rpmbuild/SPECS/
cp Signal-Desktop/*.{patch,desktop} ~/src/rpmbuild/SOURCES/
cd ~/src/rpmbuild
NOTE That the last working commit I've successfully built Signal-Desktop with is this one.
Download the source release tarball into the SOURCES directory
Update the command to match the version in Signal-Desktop.spec file.
curl -Lo SOURCES/Signal-Desktop-5.4.0.tar.gz 'https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/archive/v5.4.0.tar.gz#/Signal-Desktop-5.4.0.tar.gz'
Install yarn
Some might install it using npm as a global package but I prefer using official repos. So follow those instructions on installing the yarn repo.
Install dependency packages
Signal-Desktop requires node 16 and you can install a specific release in Fedora using streams.
sudo dnf module install nodejs:16/common
sudo dnf install rpm-build python2 openssl-devel gcc-c++ \
'@Development Tools' git-lfs yarnpkg npm
npm install -g node-gyp
If you have an old nodejs module installed from before
sudo dnf remove nodejs
sudo dnf module reset nodejs:14
Build
As of 2021-01-18 I need the QA_RPATHS environment variable set for rpmbuild to succeed, due to my rpmmacros file running check-rpaths so this has nothing to do with Signal or the build patches.
export QA_RPATHS=$(( 0x0001|0x0002|0x0008 ))
rpmbuild -bb SPECS/Signal-Desktop.spec
Install
sudo dnf install RPMS/x86_64/Signal-Desktop-1.39.4-1.fc33.x86_64.rpm
Known issues
Yarn cache
Rpmbuild results in something like this error:
error Command failed.
Exit code: 128
Command: git
Arguments: pull
Directory: /home/stemid/.cache/yarn/v6/.tmp/6b9ea74d442c0d03a1b4c2a1b8696978
Can also be Exit code: 1, just purge the cache and run rpmbuild again: rm -rf ~/.cache/yarn/v6/.tmp
Signal does not start from the Gnome applications menu
The default Signal-Desktop.desktop file included has not been working for me, it was pointing at an empty file for some reason. Here is one that works for me.
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Signal
GenericName=Messenger
Comment=Signal Private Messenger
Icon=Signal-Desktop
Exec=/usr/lib64/Signal-Desktop/signal-desktop --use-tray-icon --no-sandbox
Categories=Network
StartupNotify=true
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/sgnl;