Building installers

LocalMind is built with the Tauri CLI. pnpm tauri build runs pnpm build (Vite, output in dist/), compiles the Rust shell in release mode, and packages the installers for the system you are building on.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20 or newer and pnpm
• Rust (stable) through rustup
• The platform dependencies from the Tauri 2 prerequisites:
  • Windows: Microsoft C++ Build Tools ("Desktop development with C++") and WebView2 (preinstalled on Windows 11)
  • macOS: Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install)
  • Linux: webkit2gtk-4.1, libappindicator, librsvg, patchelf and build essentials. See the Tauri docs for your distribution

Build

pnpm install
pnpm tauri build

The first build compiles all Rust dependencies and takes several minutes. Later builds are incremental. The release profile in src-tauri/Cargo.toml uses LTO, opt-level = 3, panic = "abort" and stripped symbols, which makes release builds slower but smaller.

Command	Result
pnpm tauri build --debug	A faster build with debug symbols, not optimized
pnpm tauri build --bundles nsis	Only the listed bundle types. Use this on Windows while the version has a pre-release suffix (see below)
pnpm tauri build --no-bundle	Compile the executable only, with no installer

Output

Artifacts land in src-tauri/target/release/:

Path	Content
localmind.exe (localmind on macOS and Linux)	The raw executable
bundle/nsis/	Windows .exe setup installer
bundle/msi/	Windows .msi installer
bundle/dmg/, bundle/macos/	macOS disk image and .app
bundle/deb/, bundle/rpm/, bundle/appimage/	Linux packages

bundle.targets is "all" in tauri.conf.json, so every format valid for the host system is produced. Narrow it there, for example to ["nsis"], to speed up builds.

Building for every platform (GitHub Actions)

Tauri does not cross-compile desktop bundles reliably, so each system is built on its own runner. The workflow .github/workflows/build.yml does this for all three, and it runs only when started by hand:

1. In GitHub, open Actions, then Build installers, then Run workflow, and pick a branch or tag.
2. Choose options:
   • run_tests (default on): lint, Vitest and Rust tests on Linux must pass before any build starts.
   • draft_release (default off): also create a draft GitHub Release named v<version> with the installers attached. Nothing is published until someone presses Publish.
   • prerelease (default on): marks that draft as a pre-release.
3. When it finishes, the installers are in the run's Artifacts, kept for 14 days: localmind-windows, localmind-macos and localmind-linux.

Runner	Output	Bundles
windows-latest	NSIS .exe setup	--bundles nsis
macos-latest	Universal (Apple Silicon and Intel) .dmg	--target universal-apple-darwin --bundles dmg
ubuntu-22.04	.deb, .rpm, .AppImage	--bundles deb,rpm,appimage

Ubuntu 22.04 is used on purpose. Linux builds depend on the glibc and WebKitGTK of the build machine, so building on an older LTS keeps them usable on more distributions.

Pre-release versions

Windows .msi installers (WiX) accept only a numeric pre-release part such as 1.0.0-1. A name like 1.0.0-beta.1 makes the MSI step fail after a long compile. While the version has a suffix, build only the NSIS installer on Windows, which is what the workflow does. When 1.0.0 ships, Windows can go back to all and produce the .msi too.

App icons

Installers use the icons listed in bundle.icon in tauri.conf.json. To regenerate them from a 1024 by 1024 master PNG:

pnpm tauri icon path/to/master.png

This rewrites everything in src-tauri/icons/: PNG sizes, icon.ico, icon.icns and the Windows Store logos.

Code signing

Builds are not signed, so users see a warning on first launch (see the install guide).

• Windows: SmartScreen warns on unsigned installers. Sign with a code-signing certificate through the bundle.windows settings, and add the certificate to the workflow as a repository secret.
• macOS: Gatekeeper blocks unsigned and un-notarized apps. This needs an Apple Developer ID and notarization.
• Linux: No signing is needed for local use.

See the Tauri documentation on signing for Windows and macOS.

Troubleshooting

• linker link.exe not found on Windows: install the C++ Build Tools and restart the terminal.
• Port 1420 in use during pnpm tauri dev: Vite uses strictPort. Stop whatever holds the port.
• tauri.conf.json fails to parse on Windows: it was probably saved with a byte-order mark by PowerShell 5.1's Set-Content -Encoding utf8. Save it again without one, using an editor.
• esbuild errors with pnpm: make sure esbuild is allowed in allowBuilds in pnpm-workspace.yaml.
• A blank window in a release build while dev works: confirm pnpm build produces dist/ and that frontendDist is ../dist.