Shipping Windows Alpha — Security hardening and platform split

Date: 2026-06-24
Version: v0.1.0-alpha.1 (Windows only)
Linux / macOS: remain on v0.1.0-beta.6

Today we cut the first Windows Alpha for Gnomad Webcanvas — a separate channel from the Linux and macOS beta builds you may already be running. We have not done much hands-on Windows QA yet, so we're calling this alpha and keeping beta releases for the platforms we ship daily.

Why a separate Windows channel?

Linux Beta 6 has been our daily driver on Fedora/Nobara. Windows needs its own bundle config (NSIS, WebView2 bootstrapper, file associations) and its own path-security rules. Rather than risk breaking Linux/macOS installers, we:

1. Split Tauri config into platform overlays (tauri.linux.conf.json, tauri.macos.conf.json, tauri.windows.conf.json)
2. Split CI so v*-alpha* tags build Windows only; v*-beta* tags still build Linux + macOS
3. Pinned Linux/macOS artifact version to beta.6 in their configs while Windows ships alpha.1

What we did today

AI-assisted code review

We ran parallel reviews with GLM 5.1, Kimi K2.6, and Qwen3.5 122B (all via NVIDIA NIM), then implemented their consensus P0 fixes:

• Path guard — cross-platform path_guard.rs using the dirs crate; component-wise checks on Windows (fixes USERPROFILE and prefix-confusion bugs)
• Guarded IPC — removed unrestricted Tauri fs writes; all file I/O goes through validated Rust commands
• CSP — dropped unsafe-inline from script-src in the desktop shell
• Async I/O — file reads/writes run off the main thread
• Updater — release tag validation, HTTP timeouts, install completes before user-triggered restart

Reports live in reviews/ in the repo.

Platform code layout

src-tauri/
  tauri.conf.json          # shared shell
  tauri.windows.conf.json  # NSIS, file associations, alpha version
  tauri.linux.conf.json    # deb/rpm/AppImage, beta.6
  tauri.macos.conf.json    # app/dmg, beta.6
  src/menu/windows.rs      # Windows menu routing
src/platform/windows.ts    # Windows runtime helper

See PLATFORM_SPLIT.md for the full map.

Download

Windows Alpha expectations

• NSIS .exe installer (WebView2 bootstrapper downloads if needed)
• File associations for .html, .css, .js, .md
• Unsigned — SmartScreen may warn until we configure code signing
• Please report bugs

What's next

• Real-world Windows QA (save/open, associations, updater, multi-monitor)
• Code signing for SmartScreen
• Promote Windows to beta when we're confident — without touching Linux/macOS version pins

Built with ❤️ by Gnomad Studio 🦙