Wails3's Linux systray hands the icon off to whatever process owns
org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher on the session bus. Bare WMs (Fluxbox,
OpenBox, i3, dwm, sway, vanilla GNOME without the AppIndicator
extension) ship no watcher, so the icon registration silently fails
and the tray never appears — leaving a tray-only app like NetBird
unreachable.
Add a Linux-only watcher fallback that claims the watcher name when
nobody else does, plus an XEmbed bridge so legacy X11 system trays
(_NET_SYSTEM_TRAY_S0) can still render the icon. Both no-op on other
platforms via build tags.
Pieces:
- tray_watcher_linux.go: claims org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher on a
private session bus, exports the bare RegisterStatusNotifierItem /
RegisterStatusNotifierHost surface, and spins up an XEmbed host per
registered SNI item.
- xembed_host_linux.go: per-item event loop. Polls X11 events with a
50ms ticker, listens for the SNI NewIcon signal, dispatches Activate
/ context menu through dbusmenu (com.canonical.dbusmenu).
- xembed_tray_linux.{c,h}: the X11/cairo native bits. Window is created
with CopyFromParent visual + ParentRelative background so transparent
pixels show the toolbar beneath instead of solid black on 24-bit
trays. cairo paints the IconPixmap with OVER blending so per-pixel
alpha is honoured against the parent-relative base. GTK3 owns the
context-menu popup; menu items round-trip through dbusmenu Event.
- tray_linux.go: forces WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 in init() so
developers running `task dev` / launching the binary directly get the
same software rendering path the .desktop launcher already enables;
the deb/rpm Exec wrapper covers installed users.
- tray_watcher_other.go and xembed_host_other.go: build-tag stubs so
main.go's startStatusNotifierWatcher() compiles on every platform.
- main.go: calls startStatusNotifierWatcher() before NewTray so the
Wails systray's RegisterStatusNotifierItem call hits a watcher we
control on bare WMs.
- build/linux/netbird-ui.desktop: regenerated by `task build` to wrap
the dev launcher's Exec line with the WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER
env, matching what the tray_linux.go init does at runtime.
Adapted from work originally prototyped on the prototype/ui-wails branch.
Tested on Fluxbox (Debian 13): the icon appears in the slit/toolbar with
the toolbar's background showing through transparent pixels, left-click
opens the window, right-click brings up the GTK popup of the dbusmenu
items.
The legacy Fyne client and the sign-pipelines-built .pkg both run NetBird
in macOS Accessory mode (LSUIElement=1) — tray-only, no Dock entry, no
Cmd-Tab presence. The Wails build's bundled Info.plist (used by `task
darwin:package` for local development) didn't carry the flag, so the
.app bundle a developer builds locally diverged from the signed release.
Add LSUIElement to both Info.plist and Info.dev.plist so the local dev
flow matches what users see.
Win32 assembly manifests require a four-part version (MAJOR.MINOR.BUILD.REVISION
per the Microsoft schema). The Wails template shipped a three-part "0.0.1",
which Windows rejects with "Activation context generation failed (...) The
value 0.0.1 of attribute version in element assemblyIdentity is invalid",
so the .exe never reaches main(). Pad to "0.0.1.0".
Repoint goreleaser configs and the release workflow at client/ui-wails so
the published Linux deb/rpm, Windows binaries and macOS UI binaries are
built from the Wails source. Linux nfpm deps swap libappindicator/Fyne
GL stack for libgtk-3, libwebkit2gtk-4.1 and libayatana-appindicator3,
and the packaged .desktop file launches the binary with
WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 so RDP/VM sessions render correctly.
Frontend bindings are now committed; the release jobs add Node 20 and
pnpm 9 and run the frontend build via the goreleaser before-hook.
The SVG-derived tray icons + multi-resolution .ico path looked correct on
disk but Wails3's Shell_NotifyIcon update never landed on the running
Windows tray — the icon stayed frozen on the .exe resource regardless of
how many times we called SetIcon. Single-PNG fed through the same path
updates correctly, so revert to the source-of-truth PNGs that ship with
the legacy Fyne UI and remove the icons_windows.go / tray_icon_*.go
split. The 6 colored tray PNGs and 6 macOS-template PNGs come from
client/ui/assets verbatim. Generation pipeline (assets/svg/) is gone.
The default Windows build links the binary as a GUI subsystem app, so
stdout/stderr is detached from the launching terminal — invisible logrus
output makes tray and event-stream bugs hard to chase. Add a sibling task
that links as console subsystem and writes a separately-named binary so
the production output is preserved.
Usage:
CGO_ENABLED=1 task windows:build:console
bin\netbird-ui-console.exe # logs print to the launching cmd/PowerShell
Stage 1 of the client/ui (Fyne) replacement. Adds a new client/ui-wails
module that runs on Linux/macOS/Windows from a single React + Vite +
Tailwind frontend driven by a thin gRPC services layer in Go.
- Single-module integration (no submodule): merge Wails3 into root go.mod
with build tags !android !ios !freebsd !js so cross-compiles on those
targets exclude the package automatically.
- Seven gRPC-bound services: Connection, Settings, Networks, Profiles,
Debug, Update, Peers. Peers bridges Status polling and SubscribeEvents
to the Wails event bus (netbird:status, netbird:event).
- Tray + window shell mirrors the Fyne menu 1:1 with hide-on-close,
SIGUSR1 / Windows named-event for external "show window" triggers.
- React pages cover functional parity for Status, Settings (3 tabs),
Networks (3 tabs), Profiles, Debug, Update, QuickActions, LoginUrl.
- SVG-sourced tray icons (12 source SVGs incl. macOS template variants)
rasterized to PNG via task common:generate:tray:icons.
- Linux launcher sets WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 in the .desktop
Exec= line and in task linux:run so the app renders correctly under
RDP, VirtualBox, KVM, and bare WMs (Fluxbox/dwm) without DRM access.
