5c36bdec28
Two issues with the previous #12 approach, both caught by CI: 1. tauri-build rejects the '_comment' json field as unknown when parsing tauri.windows.conf.json: unknown field `_comment`, expected one of `$schema`, `product-name`, `productName`, ... The schema is strict, so the doc-comment has to live elsewhere. 2. tauri-build's bundle.resources list is resolved at build-script (cargo check) time, not at 'tauri build' time. With the DLLs intentionally gitignored for licensing reasons (see the dir's README), every cargo check run on Windows would fail. Fix: delete tauri.windows.conf.json entirely. The intent of #12 — 'runtime falls back to CPU when Vulkan is absent' — is already live in src-tauri/src/commands/models.rs::detect_active_compute_device, unchanged. Rewrite resources/windows/README.md to document a cargo tauri build --resource ... invocation for the release engineer. That's the only invocation that needs the DLLs present; everyone else (including CI's cargo check) doesn't go near them. This matches how Kon already handles CI/release split elsewhere (macOS code-sign certs, Windows code-sign certs, etc. all stay out of tauri.conf.json for the same reason). Co-authored-by: jars <jakejars@users.noreply.github.com>
Windows bundle resources
Files in this directory ship side-by-side with kon.exe to avoid the
DLL-hell failure modes reported in Whispering #840 / #829 and Buzz
#1459. They are not committed to the repo.
Release-engineer workflow
Before a Windows release build, populate this directory from a trusted
source (see table below), then pass --resource flags through to
tauri build:
cargo tauri build --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc -- `
--resource src-tauri/resources/windows/vulkan-1.dll `
--resource src-tauri/resources/windows/libssl-3-x64.dll `
--resource src-tauri/resources/windows/libcrypto-3-x64.dll
These files are not declared in tauri.conf.json /
tauri.windows.conf.json because cargo check (which runs in every
CI job) evaluates tauri-build and fails if a listed resource path
doesn't exist. Keeping the bundle flags at tauri build call time
means cargo check stays green on vanilla checkouts while release
builds still pick them up when the release engineer runs the
populated command above.
| File | Source | Why |
|---|---|---|
vulkan-1.dll |
LunarG Vulkan SDK runtime installer, or copied from C:\Windows\System32\vulkan-1.dll on a machine with Vulkan-capable GPU drivers |
whisper.cpp's Vulkan backend refuses to initialise without it |
libssl-3-x64.dll, libcrypto-3-x64.dll |
OpenSSL 3.x Windows build (e.g. shining-light installer) or copied from the user's %SystemRoot%\system32 |
reqwest → rustls transitively pulls these when TLS-backed downloads fail in CI; shipping them removes the "app fails to download model" class of bug |
The runtime falls back gracefully if any of these are missing at launch:
see src-tauri/src/commands/models.rs::detect_active_compute_device
and emit_runtime_warnings — the app will emit a runtime-warning
event with kind vulkan-loader-missing, downgrade the reported
activeComputeDevice to CPU, and keep running. The bundle is a
performance + reliability patch, not a load-bearing dependency.
Why isn't this a script?
Licensing. We deliberately don't auto-fetch these DLLs from a CI job — the LunarG SDK ships under the Apache 2.0 license but redistribution is conditional on an acknowledgment, and the OpenSSL 3 bundling terms want a source-availability note in the installer. Manual placement keeps the redistribution legally clean per-release.
Brief reference: docs/whisper-ecosystem/brief.md item #12.