Getting Started

Getting Started

Building and running Player Club Private VPN from source. This mirrors the README's Quick Start — this page adds prerequisites, troubleshooting, and a first-run walkthrough. For how to actually use the app once it's running, see the User Manual.

Prerequisites

• Rust (stable, MSVC toolchain) — install via rustup
• Visual Studio C++ Build Tools 2022 — provides the MSVC linker Rust needs on Windows
• Node.js 20+ and pnpm 10+
• WebView2 Runtime — preinstalled on Windows 11

Player Club Private VPN currently only builds/runs a working virtual adapter on Windows. The frontend and most of the engine build cross-platform, but the real TUN/TAP adapter code is Windows-only for now.

Install and run

pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev

This starts the Vite dev server and launches the Tauri window with hot reload.

Building a release

pnpm tauri build

Produces installers (.msi, NSIS .exe) under src-tauri/target/release/. Official builds are also produced by CI on every v* tag push — see .github/workflows/release.yml — and published as a draft GitHub Release for review before publishing.

Using the app

Once it's running, see the User Manual for a complete walkthrough — first launch, Basic/Expert mode, enabling the real adapter, connecting to a peer, hosting a Virtual Network, and every settings page.

Troubleshooting

• "Needs Admin" in Expert mode — click the relaunch prompt; adapter creation requires elevation on Windows.
• Build fails linking on Windows — confirm the MSVC Build Tools (not just MinGW) are installed; Rust on Windows needs the -msvc toolchain.
• cargo update broke the build — Cargo.lock pins alloc-stdlib (0.2.2) and brotli-decompressor (5.0.1) so the dependency graph stays on alloc-no-stdlib 2.0.x. Avoid an unscoped cargo update of these: alloc-no-stdlib 3.0.0 is incompatible with brotli 8.0.3 (Rust error E0277). If you hit this, revert the lockfile change for those crates rather than trying to resolve it forward.
• App-usage question, not a build issue — check the User Manual or FAQ first.

Still stuck? Ask in Discussions or check existing issues.