ABS Native Windows requirements

[mikiher]

Hi. My experience installing ABS as a Docker container on Windows was laden with problems:

• Docker Desktop installation issues (had some weird issues with misplaced SSL certificates)
• Docker compose relatively easy, but probably too complex for novices
• Docker context not set up properly for some reason. Manual switching of context was required
• Docker bind volumes very slow, and ABS library watcher does not work with them
• Docker (and/or WSL) default memory footprint very high. Manual tweaking was required
• Mighty Docker crashes/hanging (suddenly unexplainably losing access to a bind volume)
• Update to the latest version not hard, but again, quite complex for novices.

In short, I believe the expertise bar required for reaching a proper setup with Docker on Windows is too high.

I wanted to solicit some advice as to what's currently missing in order to release this great software on Windows without requiring Docker, and I'll try to work on that (if there's no one else doing it). From my perspective, I see the following:

• Build and release scripts (some of them seem to already exist in package.json)
• Installer
  • installing a pre-built executable
  • setting up the config and metadata directories
  • setting up environment variables
  • setting up ffmpeg
  • setting up a service (optional?)
• A tray application (optional?) (similar to Plex)
  • open the app in a new chrome tab
  • check for updates
  • notifies about updates

What else?

[advplyr]

Your help on this would be greatly appreciated. I got as far as building the executable for the node server and setting up a tray app.

The tray app I put on github for sharing my effort but doesn't need to be continued, a new project can be setup if there is a better solution. It is here https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf-win

There are technically 2 dependencies, ffmpeg and tone, however we can disregard tone since I plan on removing this. Tone is used for embedding metadata but we can use ffmpeg for that. Ffmpeg has limitations for writing metadata but not enough to justify a separate dependency.

Building the installer is where things got difficult for me. My original plan was to have the installer install ffmpeg and to build the tray app so that it can be updated. This would make it so that you can update the tray application through the GUI as well as update the server version.

I setup the tray app to check for updates of the server in a github repository. For a while I was building the exe and putting it in the release assets https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf/releases/tag/v2.1.4. I stopped because it was confusing a lot of users who thought this was a production ready windows release. Those exe's do work as long as you have ffmpeg installed.

The tray app is starting those exe's in the background and passing in arguments for port number, file paths, etc. https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf-win/blob/master/WinApp/audiobookshelf/TrayOnly.cs#L267

Just to reiterate, we don't need to use that tray app I built if you have a better approach and it may be cleaner to start from scratch. Let me know what you think

[mikiher]

I'll take a look at what you started and I'll let you know.
I also need to get up to speed on writing Windows installers - the last one I wrote was on Windows NT, many, many years ago :)
If anyone has any tools recommendation to do that, I'd be happy to hear.

[mikiher]

@advplyr , For ffmpeg installation, which build should we install, the essentials or full?
Also, I guess if ffmpeg already exists, then by default we should not install another version.
Is there some minimum required version of ffmpeg we should check for?

[mikiher]

Another couple of questions:

1. I see that there are two projects in audiobookshelf-win, the one you mentioned in c#, and the other in c++. I assume the c++ is just some old experimentation doing the same thing without using dotnet?
2. Did you choose winforms on purpose? Have you played with one of the other UI frameworks, like WPF or Avalonia? I tried Avalonia and it seemed a bit more human-readable with its xaml configurations (although for this app it seems the UI is very simple, so maybe it doesn't really matter that much).
3. Will you consider going back to putting the executable in the release assets in order for the tray app to find it? or do you think it will still be too confusing for users?

Yet another possible approach would be to just install download and install ffmpeg from within the Audiobookshelf server, if it can't find it. Then the application becomes really portable, and you can just download the executable and put it wherever you want (which also seems intuitive to users), and then no need for an installer at all (also possible to open the default browser to http://localhost:port/ when it's up). What do you think about this? I'm aware this approach is a bit more "rough around the edges". On the other hand, it is more in line with the webby nature of Audiobookshelf.

[mikiher]

We actually have two options for ffmpeg:

1. We can bundle it. The essentials version weighs about 82MB Unpacked (it's static, so it's self-contained).
   Do we also need ffprobe and ffplay? Each of them also weighs about the same.
2. We can download it from the the web the first time we run Audiobookshelf (if not already installed), and extract it into the same directory the executable is installed in.

Regarding codecs, ffmpeg comes in two build flavors, essentials and full. This page shows which codecs are in each flavor. It seems to me like all we might ever need is in the essentials build, but please take a look.

[advplyr]

We need ffprobe, not ffplay. Ffprobe has always came bundled with the builds I've gotten.

I sort of like the idea of bundling it because it reduces the chance of errors. When I was looking at creating a standalone exe of the winforms app it required bundling .NET which was very large, do you know if there is a way around that?

I'm pretty sure the essentials build is all we need. I took a look and don't recognize libraries in the full build that we are using. I think we should use the essentials build and we can always do our own builds if need be in the future, like Jellyfin does. For the Debian package we are using this build https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/git-readme.txt

We almost certainly don't need the full build since we aren't doing any video encoding/decoding.

[mikiher]

I sort of like the idea of bundling it because it reduces the chance of errors. When I was looking at creating a standalone exe of the winforms app it required bundling .NET which was very large, do you know if there is a way around that?

I just realized I haven't answered this - I don't think there's a way around installing .NET (or, at a minimum, the Desktop component of .NET), if we use the C# code for the tray app. I don't think it has to be bundled, though - I think it can be downloaded and installed as part of the ABS installation process, if it's not already installed (many people likely already have a .Net 6.0 runtime installed, since many other apps depend on it).

The only way around this dependency is to use the C++ app. I think I'd like to avoid that. The code is quite inscrutable, unless you're a hardcore Windows programmer :)

[mikiher]

I misspoke.

After looking a bit more, there seems to be a way around this. I assumed that your C# code actually required .Net 6.0, and there's indeed no way around installing that if the user hasn't already installed it. However, it looks like the code doesn't really require .Net 6.0, and can work with .Net Framework, that does come bundled with Windows 10/11.

So after some trials and errors and minor changes to the code, I settled on TargetFramework "net462", which is the .Net Framework version that came with Windows 10 v1607, which was released in 2016. I think it's safe to bet that most of our Windows 10 users are using this or a later version of the OS, so I think that at the moment we can safely use this Target and not worry about installing .Net. I'll update if there are new developments.

I removed all .Net 6+ runtimes from my Windows 10, and it looks like the app loads and works without a problem.

[advplyr]

It's probably fine to do that considering before we didn't even have a Windows install option. Perhaps we could offer 2 binaries where one is for Windows with .Net Framework. I'm not sure how big that is

[mikiher]

@advplyr hi,
I finally have an alpha version of the installer. It's at mikiher/audiobookshelf-windows. I'd really appreciate your comments/suggestions/critique. Added you as a collaborator as well.

[advplyr]

Hey thanks I've been checking it out and getting it set up. One issue I came across so far is...

Registry.GetValue(@"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Audiobookshelf", "DataDir",
    Path.Combine(Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData), _appName))

This returns null because the key "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Audiobookshelf" doesn't exist in the registry for me.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/microsoft.win32.registry.getvalue?view=net-8.0#definition

We can use SetValue if null

[mikiher]

Interesting. I'm assuming you have not used the installer, since it writes that key and value. Also, even if it doesn't exist, I'm perplexed at why this returns null, since the third parameter of GetValue is the default value which should be returned if that value does not exist. Thanks for reporting, I'll investigate further...

…

On Mon, Jan 1, 2024 at 11:11 PM advplyr ***@***.***> wrote: Hey thanks I've been checking it out and getting it set up. One issue I came across so far is... Registry.GetValue(@"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Audiobookshelf", "DataDir", Path.Combine(Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData), _appName)) This returns null because the key "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Audiobookshelf" doesn't exist in the registry for me. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/microsoft.win32.registry.getvalue?view=net-8.0#definition We can use SetValue if null — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#2352 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFMDFVVZFS3RHQW26RSVBD3YMMRAHAVCNFSM6AAAAAA72YKZT6VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43SRDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHM3TSOBZGAZTM> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[advplyr]

I updated the audiobook management tools to show an alert that it is not currently supported on the Windows install.
I published release v2.7.2 but it didn't trigger the github workflow so I just started one manually.

[advplyr]

I guess we link to the latest windows installer release in the docs

[mikiher]

Yes, please, thanks. I published release 2.7.2 of the windows-installer, and that is what we should point to.

[mikiher]

Actually, can you please set the link to https://github.com/mikiher/audiobookshelf-windows/releases/latest so that you don't need to modify it every time there's a new release.

Also, perhaps add a link to the project page itself, so that those precious few who do RTFM can do it :)?

[advplyr]

Sounds good I updated the docs

[mikiher]

Another question that I was contemplating - the installer is not signed. I looked at the costs of obtaining a code signing certificate, and they look prohibitive (~$300 per year). Maybe you already have such a certificate for Audiobookshelf, and if so, could I use it to sign the installer?

If not, do you have any suggestions on how to proceed with signing (or just forget about it)?

[dyerseve726]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this, but just wanted to say thank you so much for the native windows version. It's running perfectly for me and showed up right as I was struggling to get it working in Docker. Perfect timing! Great job.

[mikiher]

I'm happy it's working well for you.

[sg501]

Working great for me as well.

Windows 10 Pro on Xeon e3-1240v5 workstation.

Thanks to everyone for their work on this project.

[kuldan5853]

Add +1, haven't seen any issues that are not present on the mainline builds as well. Fantastic work.