Build from source

Build from source

Prerequisites

• .NET 8 SDK
• Inno Setup 6 — only needed for the installer build

Local debug build

git clone https://github.com/carterscode/GamerGuardian.git
cd GamerGuardian
dotnet build
src\GamerGuardian\bin\Debug\net8.0-windows10.0.22000.0\GamerGuardian.exe --show-settings

--show-settings opens the Settings window even when a config already exists (otherwise the window only appears on first run).

--test writes every monitor's current readout to %TEMP%\gamerguardian_selftest.txt and exits — useful when triaging weird hardware.

Local Release publish (single-file)

dotnet publish src/GamerGuardian/GamerGuardian.csproj `
    -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained `
    -p:PublishSingleFile=true `
    -p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true `
    -p:EnableCompressionInSingleFile=true `
    -p:Version=0.0.0 -o publish

This produces publish/GamerGuardian.exe (~77 MB) — runs standalone with no .NET runtime needed.

Local installer build

& "C:\Program Files (x86)\Inno Setup 6\ISCC.exe" /DAppVersion=0.0.0 installer\GamerGuardian.iss

Output: installer\Output\GamerGuardian-Setup-0.0.0.exe (~71 MB). The Inno script picks up the file from publish/ produced by the previous step.

CI / dev builds

Three workflows live in .github/workflows/:

Workflow	Trigger	Output
build.yml	PRs to main	dotnet build only — fast sanity check, no artifacts
dev-build.yml	Push to any non-main branch, or workflow_dispatch	Installer + portable EXE as workflow artifacts. Not a Release — invisible to the auto-updater
release.yml	Push to main (src/**, installer/**, or release.yml), tag push, workflow_dispatch	Public GitHub Release with the installer + portable EXE attached

Dev builds are stamped {nextStable}-dev.{sha7} so the parsed semver sits above the current stable — the dev binary won't try to "upgrade" itself to stable mid-test. See Security → Reproducibility for verifying CI-built artifacts match a local build.