Frequently Asked Questions

How Do I Get a List of Pear Applications I've Installed?

Running the following command in the terminal will list installed applications;

pear data apps

It will return a list like the following:

- pear://keet
    storage: ./pear/app-storage/by-dkey/197ea022b663edbedcf0b2a0fe44ebc99c21448cb46d375ec77d95de6e0a4c1a

- pear://runtime
    storage: ./pear/app-storage/by-dkey/50f2c1326de970da319534164017f23101c6badd5497a99045f8d9ef13978995

- pear://38cna455dbguiatg46z98cs7b6p4t4sh6hskozuhmipmpkxmmeuy
    storage: ./pear/app-storage/by-dkey/be6ff2fc20eb691af1ff7b90d5848ee1e22d2fe4fab031900e1014e224f659ab

For more information about the pear data apps command, see the cli docs.

How Do I Uninstall a Pear Application?

Uninstalling Pear Applications is currently not supported. You can reset the storage for an application via the pear drop <link> command. This is a destructive command that will permanently delete the storage for the application loosing all data it contains. Use with caution.

For more information about the pear drop command, see the cli docs.

Where is the Pear Application stored?

The Pear framework, applications and their storage are all within the pear directory. The directory's path depends on the operating system:

OS	Pear Path
MacOs	~/Library/Application Support/pear
Linux	~/.config/pear
Windows	%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\pear

This path can be accessed in a Pear application via Pear.config.pearDir.

Within the pear directory the Pear framework itself is stored where the current symlink points, Pear applications are stored in the corestores directory, and Pear application storage (aka Pear.config.storage for applications) are stored in app-storage.

Note that Pear applications and the Pear platform are stored in a corestore as hyperdrives so are not easily inspectable via a file explorer. To see the files distributed with an application use pear dump to dump its contents as files.

Can Pear be used with X language?

Pear applications currently can only be written in JavaScript, but other languages and libraries can be integrated by adding bindings as a native addon. See the bare-addon for a template to get started creating a native addon for Bare runtime.

For languages like TypeScript that compile to JavaScript, it is recommended to compile into JavaScript and then load it as the Javascript entrypoint either as the main property for a terminal application or as a <script> in the HTML entrypoint for a desktop application. For more information about configuring the entrypoint for Pear Application see here.

How Do I Write an Application Once So It Can Be Run on Desktop, Mobile, etc?

The recommendation is to write Pear applications with all the business logic and peer-to-peer (P2P) code in what is called the "Pear-end". This is a separate worker/worklet thread that communicates to the user interface (UI) via an inter-process communication (IPC) stream. By abstracting the UI from the Pear-end, the Pear-end can be reused across all versions of the application with only the UI code changing.

At the moment, the Pear Application Programming Interface (API) is not supported in mobile applications. This will change as Pear v2 comes out which uses the separation of Pear-end and UI as the default.

How is my Application Distributed? Do I have to keep the seed command running?

Pear applications are distributed via the swarm so that any peer with the application will reseed it to other peers when they are running the application. To speed up and facilitate replication, it is recommended to run the pear seed <link> command to ensure a peer is online and seeding the application.

Why Is NPM Used For Dependencies?

NPM is a great package manager, many JavaScript developers are already familiar with it and all Holepunch's packages are published on NPM. Dependencies installed in your app should be staged with the Application and then are replicated via the swarm. It is recommended to do a dry run when staging to review the changes to the application. This will include all the changes to the dependencies and so can be used to audit them looking for unexpected updates.

After you install the pear via NPM and complete the setup, NPM and Node.js are no longer required to run Pear terminal applications. The pear package on NPM is only used to bootstrap the Pear platform. After the setup the pear command is using Bare to run the Pear application.

How Do I Distribute a Binary Version of My Application?

You can make a binary version of a Pear applications using the pear-appling template repository. This repository can be configure in CMakeLists.txt, providing the metadata for your application, and compiled for MacOS, Linux and Windows. The compiled output is a small binary used to bootstrap the Pear platform and the application replicating the most recent version of them. This way you rarely, if ever, need to recompile your binary. Any future user can download it and will be able to run the most recent version of your application after replicating.

Can Peers Know My IP Address When Using hyperswarm or Swarming a Pear Application?

Your IP is exchanged with peers so that they can connect to you. If you want to protect your IP, it is recommended to use a VPN.