Overview

Author is a "development environment management" application. It simplifies/streamlines development for individuals and teams. The application is organized using a services model, where a core service provides shared/common functionality used by plugins.

Background Dervice/Daemon

The background service exposes a local HTTP service (API). All user interfaces, plugins, and other apps communicate with each other through this service. Some HTTP endpoints are exposed for end-user/third-party consumption, though most functionality is restricted to Author applications.

Graphical User Interface

The GUI is a single executable capable of launching different user interfaces, such as the core Author interface or interfaces for inidividual plugins. These interfaces are primarily for configuring the daemon, but can also provide features for end-users.

Shims & Commands

The Author suite of tools provides several shims to enhance common developer tools. Some plugins provide additional shims and commands (.cmd, .sh, .bat, etc.) as well. These are collectively referred to as "CLI" components, since most of them represent command line interpreters/interfaces. Each of these communicate with the daemon through the HTTP service.

Author Cloud

Author Cloud refers to our hosted services, such as the Pulse notification system and the licensing service. The background daemon communicates directly with the cloud for services like license renewal, but may not communicate directly for other services. For example, the notification service communicates directly with the operating system via notification centers, not directly with the background daemon. The background daemon is a privileged executable associated with specific notification types (i.e. binding it to author event notifications). This allows the background daemon to process events, even though it is not receiving them directly from the push notification services.