Contributor setup notes

Verify prerequisites before cloning

Tool	Minimum	Check
Rust (stable)	1.77+	rustc --version
Node.js	20+	node --version
Tauri CLI	2.x	npx tauri --version

Windows — move the project out of OneDrive

Cargo writes thousands of small files to target/ during compilation. OneDrive locks these files mid-build and causes:

⚠️ Access is denied. (os error 5)

Clone or move the project to a plain path like C:\dev\nova.

Icons — required before first build

src-tauri/icons/ is not committed to the repo. On first clone, the build will fail with:

⚠️ `icons/icon.ico` not found; required for generating a Windows Resource file

Generate them once from any square PNG:

npx tauri icon "your-image.png"

Linux — additional packages

Depending on your distro version, the apt-get block above may also need:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libxdo-dev libgtk-3-dev

Dependencies

Always use npm ci (not npm install) to install from the lockfile exactly. On Windows, to reset node_modules:

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force node_modules

Version mismatch warning

You may see a warning about mismatched Rust crate and npm package versions. This is cosmetic — do not upgrade packages to match. The project will build and run correctly.