The Windows installer and the Flatpak carried no ONNX Runtime, so they ran every model on tract's one core; the Arch package left it to an optional dependency. Each now installs two builds under runtimes/ — Intel's OpenVINO build and the generic WebGPU one, both with the CPU provider — fetched by tools/fetch-bundled-runtimes.sh from PyPI wheels pinned by SHA-256, pruned to the native libraries (81 + 31 MB on Linux, 67 + 42 MB on Windows), licence texts beside them. darkroom-desktop searches runtimes/openvino and runtimes/webgpu under each place a package installs to; the engine opens all it finds and keeps the one that fits the GPU, so a CUDA or ROCm runtime installed beside them still wins on its vendor's card. On Windows the chosen runtime's directory goes on PATH, because Intel's build leaves OpenVINO's DLLs for the loader to find there. The Windows image gains unzip; the installer smoke test checks both runtimes landed.
Windows cross-build environment
Reproducible container for building the Windows executable and its installer from Linux. The specification is docs/dev/windows.md; this directory is what it turned into, and every departure from the spec's first draft is recorded in the Dockerfile's comments.
Use
# Cross-compile the desktop application
./docker/windows/build.sh cargo build --release --target x86_64-pc-windows-gnu -p darkroom-desktop
# Lint the cfg(windows) branches, which the Linux job never sees
./docker/windows/build.sh cargo clippy --target x86_64-pc-windows-gnu -p darkroom-desktop -- -D warnings
# Build the installer from that binary
./docker/windows/build.sh docker/windows/package.sh
# Smoke-test under Wine (docs/dev/windows.md §6)
./docker/windows/build.sh wine target-windows/x86_64-pc-windows-gnu/release/darkroom-desktop.exe --version
./docker/windows/build.sh wine target-windows/installer/DarkRoom-0.12.0-x86_64-setup.exe /S
# Interactive shell
./docker/windows/build.sh
# After editing the Dockerfile
./docker/windows/build.sh --rebuild
Prefers podman, falls back to docker. The cargo registry, the target directory and the Wine
prefix persist under ~/.cache/darkroom-windows/, so a warm rebuild is minutes and the first
wineboot happens once.
What is verified here, and what is not
Measured on the first build, 2026-09-12:
| Check | Result |
|---|---|
cargo build --target x86_64-pc-windows-gnu -p darkroom-desktop |
Links. 115 MB, PE32+ … (GUI) |
| DLL imports | 26 Windows system DLLs; no libwinpthread-1.dll, libgcc_s, libstdc++ |
wine darkroom-desktop.exe --version |
darkroom-desktop 0.12.0, exit 0, 0.1 s |
makensis |
105 MB DarkRoom-<version>-x86_64-setup.exe, 64-bit stub |
wine setup.exe /S |
Installs exe + 10 models to AppData\Local\Programs\DarkRoom, writes the HKCU uninstall key; the installed exe runs |
wine uninstall.exe /S |
Removes the directory and the key |
| Start Menu shortcut | Not verifiable here. CreateShortcut is IShellLink and does nothing under a headless Wine; the directory beside it is created. Check on Windows. |
Also checked by running the application itself under Wine: its log lands in
AppData\Local\darkroom\state, and nothing is written outside AppData (FR-PLAT-WIN-1).
None of this proves a Vulkan device opens, a render completes, fonts are found, the secret store round-trips or the browser opens for sign-in. Those are a Windows machine, once per release.
In CI
.gitea/workflows/windows-image.yml builds this image and pushes it to
gitea.tourolle.paris/dtourolle/darkroom-windows, exactly as the Android image is handled — tagged
by the tree hash of docker/windows/, rebuilt when and only when a file here changes. The
windows job in build-and-test.yml then runs, inside it, the same commands listed above plus
cargo clippy --target x86_64-pc-windows-gnu -- -D warnings, and uploads the installer as an
artefact.