Windows does not see output from kanata_wintercept (kanata.exe works fine)

[bogorad]

My desktop is win10, fully patched.
Running Kanata: [v1.6.0-prerelease-1]

I've been playing with KMonad, but really wanted to control the mouse (KMonad's 'mouse keys' didn't work for me for some reason) and have input chords. So, I re-made my config for Kanata and tried different executables.

First, I tried kanata_wintercept.exe, it worked, showed everything in its log, but no output was received by Win10. I tried running it as admin - no change in behavior, Win10 still does not receive anything.

Second, I tried kanata.exe and kanata_scancode_experimental.exe - both worked fine.

Any idea why? I'd really like to use the wintercept version.

[jtroo]

Assuming you followed all the driver installation instructions properly, unfortunately I'm not sure why. The binary works for me (Win 11 though). Notably, I no longer have any Windows 10 machine to test or compile with - though I believe I installed the Win10 (and not Win11) .NET SDK for Windows - so I think it should be working.

If you could, maybe try compiling it yourself and see if the problem still happens? https://github.com/jtroo/kanata?tab=readme-ov-file#feature-flags

[bogorad]

Thank you for your prompt response! I'll try building myself.

While we're at it, my laptop is Win11/ARM64 (Lenovo X13s). Is it possible to make a build for it? I'm happy to alpha/beta-test it. I'll try it myself but my experience with Rust is very limited.

[jtroo]

Win11/ARM64 (Lenovo X13s). Is it possible to make a build for it?

Seems like it might be possible, but I haven't looked into cross-compilation much - I won't give any timeline for when I would look into this.

aarch64-pc-windows-msvc seems like it can run a Rust compiler, so you could try giving it a shot on your own timeline :)

[bogorad]

so you could try giving it a shot on your own timeline :)

Thank you! I'll give it a shot and report back.

[bogorad]

Ok, I'm back to report a total success!

At first, I tried to avoid installing the stuff I don't generally need on my laptop. So, with some help from a friend, and utilizing my access to an Ampere instance (in the Oracle 'always free' cloud), I managed to install cross and cross-compile the app. However, there's no MS linker for linux, so that was a failure ;)

Then I bit the bullet, installed MSVC, Rust, and WSL2 (for git), and it all worked fine. I was able to compile both Kanata (I used the scancode variant), and windows_key_tester.

Here's the proof (yes, the only practial way to make sure you have a native app in win/arm is to check if "compatibility" field is greyed-out 🤦)

Tested both executables and they do work.

Thanks again!