tracking: Linux Desktop App support and build pipeline

[youssefbrr]

Problem

Currently, the releases page only provides .dmg and .exe files. While the codebase uses Tauri and the scap crate (which supports Pipewire), there are likely UI or permission-handling gaps preventing a Linux release.

Steps to Reproduce / Technical Blockers

• When attempting to build the desktop package on Linux (e.g., Ubuntu 24.04), what are the current blockers?
• Are there specific Tauri plugins or Rust dependencies that are currently Darwin/Windows only?

Expected Behavior

• Ability to run pnpm build in the apps/desktop directory on a Linux environment and generate a functional binary.
• Support for Wayland/PipeWire screen capture (using the existing scap implementation).

Environment

• OS: [e.g. Ubuntu 24.04, Fedora 40]
• Display Server: Wayland / X11
• Cap Version: v0.4.4 (Latest)

Contribution

I am happy to help test alpha builds or provide logs if a maintainer can point to a branch where Linux support is being drafted.

[linear]

CAP-623

[tembo]

Thanks for creating this tracking issue. There have been several previous requests for Linux support (#609, #1266, #1442, #107), and as noted in those discussions, the maintainers are open to contributions but lack the bandwidth to implement it themselves.

Here's what I found exploring the codebase for current blockers:

Critical Missing Implementations:

1. Screen Capture - The crates/scap-targets/src/platform/mod.rs only has implementations for macOS (ScreenCaptureKit) and Windows (DXGI). A new linux.rs would need to implement X11/XCB capture or PipeWire's screencast portal for Wayland.

2. Camera Input - crates/camera/src/lib.rs has an explicit #![cfg(any(windows, target_os = "macos"))] attribute, so the crate won't even compile on Linux. You'd need to create a crates/camera-linux/ crate (similar to camera-avfoundation/ and camera-windows/) using v4l2 bindings.

3. Recording Pipeline - crates/recording/src/sources/screen_capture/mod.rs conditionally includes macos.rs and windows.rs modules, but no linux.rs exists.

4. Window/Display Enumeration - crates/scap-targets/ has no Linux implementation for listing available windows and displays.

Components That Should Work:

• The audio capture in crates/audio/ uses CPAL which has Linux backends (PulseAudio/ALSA), though system audio capture may need additional work.
• crates/enc-ffmpeg/ uses FFmpeg for encoding which is cross-platform.

Build Configuration:

• apps/desktop/src-tauri/tauri.conf.json has no Linux bundle targets configured (missing AppImage/Deb/Flatpak settings).
• The workspace Cargo.toml doesn't have any Linux-specific dependencies yet.

No PipeWire/Wayland code exists - grep searches return zero results for pipewire, wayland, x11, or xcb in the entire codebase.

For contributors looking to help, the likely implementation path would be:

1. Add PipeWire Portal support for screen capture (works on both X11 and Wayland under modern distros)
2. Add v4l2 camera support via the v4l crate
3. Update the scap-targets crate to enumerate displays/windows via xdg-desktop-portal
4. Add Tauri bundle configuration for Linux distributions

Relevant files to start with:

• crates/scap-targets/src/platform/ (add linux.rs)
• crates/camera/src/lib.rs (remove platform restriction, add Linux backend)
• crates/recording/src/sources/screen_capture/mod.rs (add Linux module)
• apps/desktop/src-tauri/tauri.conf.json (add Linux bundle config)