Tandem: A Linux upgrade client for Discord

What is Tandem?

Tandem is a dpkg based upgrade client for Discord's Linux desktop app.

Motivation

Tandem was born from a minor annoyance: Discord's Linux app does not auto update.

Tandem streamlines the client update process, making a multi-click operation achievable with a single command.

Using Tandem

If you're not planning on poking around with Tandem's source code, then you can use the pre-built executable, which can be downloaded here.

Once you've downloaded the executable, it can be run:

cd ~/Downloads

./tandem --help

"""
usage: tandem [-h] [-v] [--dpkg-verbose] [--dry-run]

A Discord upgrade client for Linux.

options:
  -h, --help      show this help message and exit
  -v, --verbose   Enables verbose logging.
  --dpkg-verbose  Enables dpkg verbose logging.
  --dry-run       Toggle whether Discord will be updated.

Authored by <culver.darian@gmail.com>, licensed under GPL v3.
"""

Using Tandem during development

Using Tandem during development is easy, but it does assume you have a few things installed:

• dpkg
• git
• Python
• Python's pip module
• Python's venv module
• Discord's package dependencies
  • libasound2
  • libatomic1
  • libnotify4
  • libnspr4
  • libnss3
  • libxss1
  • libxtst6

Once these are installed, you're ready to go!

1: Checking out the project

First, checkout Tandem's source code:

mkdir /tmp/tandem
cd /tmp/tandem
git clone git@github.com:Darianisak/Tandem.git --depth=1

2: Creating a Virtual Environment

Then, we'll create a virtual environment to prevent Tandem from interfering with other projects, and/or system packages:

cd /tmp/tandem
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

3: Running Tandem

And then we'll run Tandem to install or update Discord:

python3 update_discord.py

"""
INFO - Installed version: 0.0.108
INFO - Upstream version: 0.0.108
INFO - Installed version is up to date!
"""

We'll then check that Discord has been installed with:

apt policy discord

For further details about Tandem, or the options that it can take, refer to the help dialog:

python3 update_discord.py --help

"""
usage: tandem [-h] [-v] [--dpkg-verbose] [--[here][Releases].dry-run]

A Discord upgrade client for Linux.

options:
  -h, --help      show this help message and exit
  -v, --verbose   Enables verbose logging.
  --dpkg-verbose  Enables dpkg verbose logging.
  --dry-run       Toggle whether Discord will be updated.

Authored by <culver.darian@gmail.com>, licensed under GPL v3.
"""

Building Tandem

Tandem binaries are built using PyInstaller and distributed via GitHub.

Assuming you already have the project checked out under /tmp/tandem, the next step would be to create a virtual environment:

cd /tmp/tandem
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Then, we'll run the build process:

pyinstaller update_discord.py --onefile --name tandem

Alongside a number of build artifacts, this will produce a single executable file:

cd dist

./tandem --help

"""
usage: tandem [-h] [-v] [--dpkg-verbose] [--dry-run]

A Discord upgrade client for Linux.

options:
  -h, --help      show this help message and exit
  -v, --verbose   Enables verbose logging.
  --dpkg-verbose  Enables dpkg verbose logging.
  --dry-run       Toggle whether Discord will be updated.

Authored by <culver.darian@gmail.com>, licensed under GPL v3.
"""

FAQ

What distributions has this been tested with?

Tandem has been tested with:

• Ubuntu Noble (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS)
• Debian Bookworm (Debian 12).

What if I already have Discord installed?

Tandem will not attempt to update Discord unless your installed version is older than the most recent version of Discord.

If you have the most recently version already, Tandem will not make any changes.