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build-companion.md

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title Building Distributable Binaries
sidebar_label Building Companion Distributables
sidebar_position 12
description Sharing your modified Companion with others

The Companion repo allows you to build a distributable binary from sources by running

yarn dist

You can also cross-build for a specific platform using one of the following:

  • Desktop Linux: yarn lindist
  • Raspberry Pi: yarn rpidist
  • Windows: yarn windist
  • macOS intel: yarn macdist
  • macOS Apple silicon: yarn macarmdist

The build will be added to a sub-directory of electron-output/ named xxx-unpacked. For example electron-output/linux-unpacked or electron-output/win-unpacked.

There you will find a binary to run a Headed build (a system with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse). On Windows it is named Companion.exe on linux it is named companion-launcher

Windows builds also include an installer program named companion-win64.exe in electron-output/ (not electron-output/win-unpacked!), which can be distributed independently of the "unpacked" contents.

Linux builds include a shell script to run headless named companion_headless.sh

You can also start a "headless" run manually by running main.js from xxx-unpacked/resources, i.e.:

./node-runtimes/main/bin/node main.js

:::info[Linux note]

To build Windows distributables from Linux systems (even WSL) you must install Wine first:

sudo apt install wine
sudo bash -c “dpkg --add-architecture i386 && apt-get update && apt-get install wine32:i386”

note: if your wine config gets corrupted, delete ~/.wine.

:::

:::info[Windows note]

The very end of ‘yarn dist’ (signing) creates symlinks. By default, Windows restricts symlink creation, so this step will fail. You have three options to allow building Companion in Windows:

  1. Run yarn dist in a shell with Administrator privileges.

  2. Turn on Developer Mode in Windows Settings. (Open Settings and search for "developer"):

    Windows Developer Settings

  3. Set a local policy in the “Local Security Policy” editor: Security Settings > Local Policies > User Rights Assignment: Create symbolic links, to allow yourself to create symlinks:

    Windows Symlink Permissions

:::

:::tip[Windows Tip]

Windows Antimalware Executable can slow down build times by 50-100%. You can improve performance by excluding certain folders: After cloning the companion repo and running yarn install the first time (see Developing Core Companion) go to Windows Security > Virus and Threat Protection > Exclusions and add node_modules from your companion root. For completeness and a slight additional boost add: cache, dist, electron-output, shared-lib\dist, webui\build, and companion\dist. You may want/need to exclude these folders from backup apps too.

:::

:::danger[Raspberry Pi]

It is not recommended to run Companion on a Raspberry Pi with the desktop environment installed.

:::