Files

Talon 45d87bde67 docs(M4): expand Windows client README with build guide and known limitations

Replaces the M4-placeholder stub with a real build/run guide covering prerequisites,
build order (server → DLL → dotnet build), DLL dependency verification, manual test
runbook, and the known limitations (focus-scoped PTT, NR passthrough, no admin UI,
TOFU-pins-leaf-cert vs Ed25519).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

2026-06-17 00:52:57 +02:00

3.0 KiB

Raw Blame History

VoiceCat — Windows client

WinForms (.NET 10 LTS) UI over voicecat.dll (MinGW-built libvoicecat shared library).

Prerequisites

Tool	Version	Notes
.NET SDK	10.0.x	`dotnet --version` should report `10.0.*`
CMake	3.25+	For building the C++ DLL
MinGW-w64 / MSYS2 UCRT64	GCC 13+	`C:\tools\msys64\ucrt64` is the expected location
vcpkg	any	`VCPKG_ROOT` env var must point to a bootstrapped clone

Build order

1. Build the server (for testing)

cmake --preset m1-dev
cmake --build --preset m1-dev --target voicecat-server

2. Build the DLL

cmake --preset windows-client
cmake --build --preset windows-client

Output: build/windows-client/bin/voicecat.dll

Verify no MinGW runtime dependencies remain:

& "C:\tools\msys64\ucrt64\bin\objdump.exe" -p build/windows-client/bin/voicecat.dll |
    Select-String "DLL Name"

Expected: only Windows system DLLs (KERNEL32.dll, WS2_32.dll, BCRYPT.dll, etc.). If libgcc_s_seh-1.dll, libstdc++-6.dll, or libwinpthread-1.dll appear, the -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++ -static -lwinpthread link flags in core/CMakeLists.txt are not taking effect — check the CMake log for the VOICECAT_BUILD_SHARED+WIN32 branch.

3. Build the C# solution

cd clients/windows
dotnet build VoiceCat.slnx

The app's Directory.Build.props copies voicecat.dll from ../../build/windows-client/bin/ into the output directory automatically on every build.

Running manually

# Terminal 1 — start the server
./build/m1-dev/bin/voicecat-server.exe --name "My Server"

# Terminal 2 — launch the client
dotnet run --project clients/windows/VoiceCat.App/VoiceCat.App.csproj

On first connect to a new server:

Enter 127.0.0.1 as the host (not localhost — Windows resolves localhost to ::1 first, and while the server now dual-stacks, 127.0.0.1 is cleaner for local testing).
The server identity dialog will appear. The TLS leaf-cert SHA-256 fingerprint is shown; accept to pin it. Subsequent connects to the same server will be silent (MATCHED).

Known limitations

PTT is focus-scoped — the push-to-talk key only works while the VoiceCat window has focus. A system-wide WH_KEYBOARD_LL hook is not used in v1 (permissions + AV risk).
Receive-side noise reduction checkbox in per-user tuning is wired end-to-end but is a passthrough no-op until a real APM/NS backend is built (no working Windows/MSVC port of webrtc-audio-processing upstream — see docs/tech-stack.md §1).
Admin/moderation UI is not present — kick/ban/permissions/account provisioning are M5 scope (requires server-side dispatch first).
TOFU pins the TLS leaf cert, not the declared Ed25519 identity fingerprint. Both are shown in the identity dialog, but the cert fingerprint is the value that is actually verified on reconnect. See docs/security.md §1.1.

3.0 KiB Raw Blame History