The polyPod

The polyPod is a personal data store and privacy-preserving runtime environment for privacy-conscious computations. It executes Features; small, sandboxed JavaScript applications that can be launched by the user and interact with their personal data.

It is still under heavy development, and some aspects are missing or unrefined. For more on the vision please read the polyPod whitepaper.

To better understand the architecture, have a look at docs/architecture.md, and to understand how we are planning to evolve the code base, see docs/tech-roadmap.md.

Structure

• platform: The polyPod platform
• features: polyPod Features
• feature-utils: Utilities used by Features
• assets: Assets shared across the polyPod and Features
• build: The build logic
• dev-utils: Utilities used at build time

Requirements

The main thing you need is Node.js version 16.x or newer.

In order to build for Android or iOS (see below), have a look at the requirements in platform/core/README.md, which is needed for both, and then platform/android/README.md or platform/ios/README.ms respectively.

Setting the target platform

The polyPod runs on several platforms. You can control which platforms to build for using the POLYPOD_BUILD_PLATFORMS environment variable.

Regardless of what you set it to, even if you don't set it, podjs will always be built - which is sufficient to run and develop Features.

In order to build the polyPod for other platforms, set POLYPOD_BUILD_PLATFORMS to one of the following values:

• all
• android
• ios

Building

If you're on Windows, please follow the steps in dev-utils/windows first.

In general, you just need to run:

$ ./build.js

(Yes, we have a custom build script, you can read more about why here if you're curious.)

This will build the platform independent code, including all the bundled Features, as well as podjs, a browser-based implementation of the polyPod.

After this you can build the platform (e.g. android or ios), or try one of the Features (e.g. features/example).

Testing

To run the tests, just execute:

$ ./build.js test

Developer tips

We've defined some helpful aliases you might enjoy:

$ . dev-utils/scripts/env.sh

Linting is done via tools configured at the top level (root) directory.

To run the linter:

$ ./build.js lint

Please note that this won't trigger tests or linting for non-JS code, for example android.

If linting reveals some error, they can be fixed with

$ ./build.js lintfix

Although just doing the linting will reveal the rules, there are a couple of sources for this configuration:

• .editorconfig for general editor configuration.
• .eslintrc.cjs for specific JS/TS linting rules.

Documentation

For a complete overview, see docs/README.md.

Branches

Ongoing development is happening in the main branch. We aim to keep it stable at all times, but it is not as thoroughly tested as our releases. This is the branch to make contributions against.

We prepare releases in the release branch. If no release is in progress, it reflects the state of the last release we made.

Security

Please read the SECURITY document on how to report potential security vulnerabilities in polyPod and where to find polypoly's Vulnerability Disclosure Policy.

Issues and contributions

Please see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Licensing

Copyright © 2021-2022 pc polypoly coop SCE mbH

Licensed under the GNU General Public License, Version 3. Please see the LICENSE document for details and a copy of the license.

License information of 3rd party components is available in the 3rd-party-licenses/ directory.

Trademarks

• polypoly® is a registered trademark of polypoly Enterprise GmbH and pc polypoly coop SCE mbH
• polyPod® is a registered trademark of pc polypoly coop SCE mbH
• polyPedia® is a registered trademark of polypoly Foundation gGmbH