2b272e74c8
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.
NetBird desktop UI (Wails3 + React)
Replaces client/ui (Fyne). One binary on Windows / macOS / Linux,
talks to the NetBird daemon over gRPC, renders a React frontend in a
WebView.
Prerequisites
- Go ≥ 1.25, Node ≥ 20, pnpm (
corepack enable && corepack prepare pnpm@latest --activate) wails3CLI:go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v3/cmd/wails3@latesttask:go install github.com/go-task/task/v3/cmd/task@latest- A running NetBird daemon (default:
unix:///var/run/netbird.sock, Windowstcp://127.0.0.1:41731) - Linux only:
libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev,libgtk-3-dev,libayatana-appindicator3-dev
Develop without rebuilding
cd client/ui-wails
task dev
task dev runs Vite (port 9245) + the Go binary + a *.go watcher.
Frontend edits hot-reload instantly. Go edits trigger a rebuild and
relaunch. Pass daemon flags after --:
task dev -- --daemon-addr=tcp://127.0.0.1:41731
For pure UI work (no native window, fastest loop):
cd frontend && pnpm dev
Production build
task build
Output in bin/. Frontend assets are embedded into the binary.
Cross-compile Windows from Linux
Install the mingw-w64 toolchain once:
sudo apt install gcc-mingw-w64-x86-64 # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo dnf install mingw64-gcc # Fedora
sudo pacman -S mingw-w64-gcc # Arch
Then:
CGO_ENABLED=1 task windows:build
Produces bin/netbird-ui.exe. macOS cross-compile from Linux is not
supported (signing and notarization need a real Mac).
Windows console build (logs in the terminal)
Default windows:build links the binary as a Windows GUI app, which
detaches from the launching console — logrus output, fmt.Println,
and panics go nowhere visible. To debug tray/event/daemon issues:
CGO_ENABLED=1 task windows:build:console
Produces bin/netbird-ui-console.exe. Run it from cmd.exe /
PowerShell / Windows Terminal and stdout/stderr land in that
terminal. Same flag works on a native Windows build (drop the
CGO_ENABLED=1 if your toolchain already has it set).
Regenerating bindings
When a Go service signature changes:
wails3 generate bindings
task dev does this automatically on *.go save.
Tray icons
Source SVGs live in assets/svg/ (state.svg + state-macos.svg). After editing
any SVG, rasterize to the PNGs the Go side embeds:
task common:generate:tray:icons
Requires Inkscape. Commit the resulting assets/*.png files alongside the
SVG change so CI doesn't need Inkscape installed.