HPR-Store

A cross-platform native extension and store manager UI for HPR (Human Pattern Recorder), built with C++, Slint, Lua, and libarchive.

It allows browsing, filtering, installing, and deleting extensions and themes for HPR directly from inside the HPR application interface.

Important

This is not a standalone application. HPR-Store is itself an HPR extension — a plugin you drop into HPR's extension folder. Once installed, it acts as a store manager that lets you browse and install other extensions and themes from within HPR's UI.

Note

HPR Version Compatibility: HPR-Store requires HPR v0.9.7 or higher. Older versions of HPR lack necessary extension manager APIs (such as HPR.reloadMyself).

---

⚙️ Required HPR Setting

Before HPR-Store can work, you must enable the following option in HPR's settings panel:

Settings → Extensions → Allow Extensions to Load Native Libraries

Warning

This setting allows Lua extensions to call package.loadlib / require to load external .dll or .so libraries. HPR warns that this bypasses sandbox restrictions — only enable this for extensions you trust.

---

🚀 Installation (Quick Start)

No building required if you grab a pre-built release.

1. Download the latest release zip from the Releases page.
2. Extract the zip — you will get a folder named HPR-Store/ containing four files:
   • HPR-Store.lua
   • libHPR-Store.so (Linux)
   • HPR-Store.dll (Windows)
   • registry.json
3. Copy the entire HPR-Store/ folder to HPR's extension directory:
   • Linux: ~/.config/HPR/extensions/
   • Windows: %APPDATA%\HPR\HPR_Config\extensions\
4. Open HPR, go to Settings → Extensions, and enable "Allow Extensions to Load Native Libraries".
5. Restart HPR (or press the rescan button in the Extensions menu). HPR-Store will appear in your extensions list.
6. Click the Action button on HPR-Store to open the store window.

---

🔄 Self-Update

HPR-Store maintains its own release cycle independent of HPR.

When the registry reports a newer version of HPR-Store, an Update HPR-Store button appears in the top-left of the store window's title bar. Clicking it:

1. Downloads the new release zip to a temp directory.
2. Renames the currently loaded library to .old (avoiding OS file locks on Windows, avoiding in-place overwrite crashes on Linux).
3. Copies the new binary and Lua files into the extension folder.
4. Calls HPR.reloadMyself() — HPR hot-reloads the store extension with the new binary, completely without restarting.

Leftover .old files from a previous update are cleaned up automatically on next launch.

---

📦 Publishing an Extension or Theme

Want your extension or theme listed in HPR-Store? See PUBLISHING.md for the full submission rules and procedure.

---

🛠 Building from Source

Dependencies (Linux)

• Slint Compiler & Library
• libarchive (extracts .zip and .tar archives)
• ixwebsocket (performs HTTP fetches and package downloads)
• nlohmann_json (parses registry JSON files)
• openssl / zlib

# Install system dependencies (Ubuntu / Debian)
sudo apt install build-essential cmake libarchive-dev libssl-dev zlib1g-dev

# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S base-devel cmake libarchive openssl zlib

# Build
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build . --config Release

The post-build step automatically copies the compiled library, HPR-Store.lua, and registry.json to HPR's active extensions directory.

Building on Windows

Warning

Building on Windows is currently error-prone and glitchy. I'll be adding detailed steps in a future update. For now, please use the pre-built release from the Releases page.

---

🧩 Technical Architecture

Lua Entrypoint (src/HPR-Store.lua)

Registers HPR metadata and binds lifecycle callbacks (init, onTick, onExit, onAction) to native library symbols loaded via package.loadlib.

Native Library (src/library.cpp)

Exposes initialize, destroy, and showUi as extern "C" symbols. Holds the global lua_State* pointer used to bridge C++ back into Lua for lifecycle calls (HPR.unloadExtension, HPR.reloadMyself, HPR.refreshExtensions).

UI Controller (src/GUI.cpp)

Owns the StoreWindow Slint instance and wires it to UIEventBridge, which maps all user interactions to C++ installer and registry logic.

Registry & Installer (src/registryManager.cpp, src/installer.cpp)

• Downloads remote registry.json from GitHub via ixwebsocket.
• Downloads and extracts .zip release archives via libarchive.
• Before any file modification, synchronously unloads the target extension via HPR.unloadExtension through the live Lua state.
• For self-updates: uses dladdr (Linux) and GetModuleFileNameW (Windows) to resolve the exact loaded library path, then performs rename-staging before overwriting.