Development

Development

How to build WKVRCProxy from source and iterate. For why the build looks the way it does, see Build Pipeline.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11 x64.
• .NET 10 SDK (dotnet --version ≥ 10.0).
• Git + PowerShell 5.1+ (the build script uses both).
• Visual Studio Build Tools "Desktop development with C++" workload — required for the patched yt-dlp wrapper's AOT publish (the linker step calls MSVC's link.exe). Install via Visual Studio Installer if missing; CI on windows-latest already has it. Without this workload, build.ps1 will fail at the WKVRCProxy.YtDlp publish step with a link.exe not found or similar error.

Project layout

Project	Output	Role
WKVRCProxy.Shared	DLL	Wire DTOs (Protocol.cs), WkvrcPaths, Logger, CrashHandler, LogUtil, ToolsDirSweeper — referenced by all four exes
WKVRCProxy	WKVRCProxy.exe (~80 MB)	Watchdog daemon — patches yt-dlp.exe, named-pipe IPC server, persistent WS to mesh server, hosts ticker, heartbeat
WKVRCProxy.Updater	WKVRCProxy.Updater.exe (~80 MB)	Standalone update check + apply
WKVRCProxy.Uninstaller	WKVRCProxy.Uninstaller.exe (~80 MB)	Standalone teardown
WKVRCProxy.YtDlp	dist/tools/yt-dlp.exe (~3.27 MB)	Patched yt-dlp wrapper. AOT-published, native code, no embedded runtime. <AssemblyName>yt-dlp</AssemblyName> so it deploys as yt-dlp.exe directly
WKVRCProxy.Tests	xUnit DLL	80+ tests covering protocol round-trip, atomic copy / SHA, hosts parser, sweeper, heartbeat formatting, etc.

All target net10.0. The watchdog/Updater/Uninstaller publish self-contained single-file with R2R; the YtDlp wrapper publishes AOT (single native exe, no runtime needed).

Build a release zip

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File build.ps1
# or, faster local rebuilds:
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File build.ps1 -SkipZip

Output: dist/ (the layout that goes into the zip) and release/WKVRCProxy-v<version>.zip. Phase-by-phase breakdown: Build Pipeline.

.NET iteration

dotnet build WKVRCProxy.slnx
dotnet run --project src/WKVRCProxy
dotnet test src/WKVRCProxy.Tests

dotnet run against source is the fastest dev loop for the watchdog. The watchdog looks for the patched yt-dlp at <install>/tools/yt-dlp.exe — for iterating on watchdog plumbing (MeshClient / LocalIpcServer / PatchManager), build the wrapper once into dist/tools/ via build.ps1 -SkipZip and then iterate the watchdog with dotnet run. The wrapper itself is invoked by VRChat as Tools/yt-dlp.exe with VRChat-specific argv shapes — dotnet run against src/WKVRCProxy.YtDlp standalone won't be a useful dev loop.

Runtime state in dev

Path	Purpose
%LOCALAPPDATA%Low\WKVRCProxy\	State root — all watchdog/wrapper state lives here (LocalLow because the wrapper inherits Low integrity from VRChat's Tools dir)
%LOCALAPPDATA%Low\WKVRCProxy\clean_exit.flag	Written on graceful watchdog shutdown so the next launch knows the previous run exited cleanly
%LOCALAPPDATA%Low\WKVRCProxy\logs\watchdog-<utc>.log	Rolling watchdog log (10 MiB, 7-day retention). Tees Console.Out AND Console.Error
%LOCALAPPDATA%Low\WKVRCProxy\logs\yt-dlp-wrapper.log	Per-invocation wrapper trace, appended on every yt-dlp.exe call
%LOCALAPPDATA%Low\WKVRCProxy\crashes\crash-<component>-<utc>.log	Unhandled-exception postmortems (paths + username redacted)
%LOCALAPPDATA%Low\VRChat\VRChat\Tools\yt-dlp.exe	The patched copy in place (== tools/yt-dlp.exe from dist/)
%LOCALAPPDATA%Low\VRChat\VRChat\Tools\yt-dlp-og.exe	VRChat's vanilla yt-dlp, preserved as fallback
\\.\pipe\WKVRCProxy.resolve	Named pipe with explicit Low-integrity SACL — Low-integrity wrapper connects, Medium-integrity watchdog accepts

Always go through WkvrcPaths.StateRoot() / WkvrcPaths.LogsDir() / WkvrcPaths.CrashesDir() — never hardcode Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md and Engineering Standards.

The wiki content lives at wiki/. Edit there — the wiki-sync.yml workflow mirrors to the GitHub Wiki on push to main.