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Building rfmeter on Windows

The code is cross-platform — Gio (GUI), go.bug.st/serial (serial I/O), and fogleman/gg (PNG snapshots) all support Windows. None of the Linux system libraries from the README (libxkbcommon, X11, Wayland, EGL) are needed: Gio links directly against the Windows graphics stack.

rfmeter running on Windows, connected to COM9

Prerequisites

  • Go 1.22+ (1.25+ is pulled in transitively by go.bug.st/serial). Install from https://go.dev/dl/.
  • STM32 Virtual COM Port driver. On Windows 10/11 the meter's CDC-ACM interface is recognised automatically and shows up as a COMx port — no driver install or special permissions (no dialout-group equivalent). On older Windows, install ST's STSW-STM32102 VCP driver if the port doesn't appear.
  • No build-time C toolchain is required — Gio's Windows backend uses syscalls, not CGO.

Build & run

In PowerShell or cmd, from the repo root:

go build -ldflags="-s -w" -o rfmeter.exe ./cmd/rfmeter
.\rfmeter.exe

-ldflags="-s -w" strips debug info to shrink the binary; drop it while developing.

Or use the bundled PowerShell helper (no make required):

.\build.ps1            # build rfmeter.exe (GUI subsystem, no console)
.\build.ps1 run        # build and run
.\build.ps1 test       # go test -race ./...
.\build.ps1 clean

If scripts are blocked by execution policy, either run it as powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\build.ps1 <target>, or use the make.bat wrapper, which applies the bypass for you:

make            :: build rfmeter.exe (default)
make run        :: build and run
make test       :: go test -race ./...
make clean

Hide the console window (optional)

A plain go build opens a console window alongside the GUI. To launch without it, build as a GUI subsystem binary:

go build -ldflags="-s -w -H=windowsgui" -o rfmeter.exe ./cmd/rfmeter

The make windows target (from the repo's Makefile) already builds with -H=windowsgui, so the produced rfmeter.exe has no console window.

Application icon

The Windows .exe carries an embedded icon (the green RF mark). It is linked from cmd/rfmeter/rfmeter_windows_amd64.syso — Go automatically includes *_windows_amd64.syso resource files when building for Windows, and ignores them on every other platform.

To regenerate it after changing the artwork in build/icon/:

magick build/icon/rfmeter-256.png \
  -define icon:auto-resize=256,128,64,48,32,16 build/icon/rfmeter.ico
go run github.com/akavel/rsrc@latest \
  -ico build/icon/rfmeter.ico -arch amd64 \
  -o cmd/rfmeter/rfmeter_windows_amd64.syso

Cross-compiling from Linux/macOS

You can produce the Windows binary without a Windows machine:

GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 go build -ldflags="-s -w" -o rfmeter.exe ./cmd/rfmeter

This works because the Windows build path is CGO-free.

Differences from Linux

Linux Windows
Serial device /dev/ttyACM0 COM3 (etc.)
Port access user in dialout group none needed
System libs libxkbcommon-x11-dev, X11/EGL none
Driver in-kernel cdc_acm STM32 VCP (auto on Win10+)

Auto-detection is identical on both: the app matches the meter's USB VID 0483 / PID 5740, so it finds the right COMx port without any configuration. CSV logs and PNG snapshots are written to the current working directory, same as on Linux.