The unpacked Hermes.exe showed the stock Electron icon + name in the
taskbar because build.win.signAndEditExecutable=false disables BOTH
electron-builder's signing AND its rcedit metadata/icon stamping. That
flag is load-bearing: enabling it re-triggers signtool -> winCodeSign,
whose macOS symlinks crash 7-Zip on non-admin Windows (unfixable dead end).
Decouple identity-stamping from signing entirely: after npm run pack,
run rcedit ourselves on the produced exe.
- Add rcedit as a direct devDependency of apps/desktop (the transitive
electron-winstaller copy is fragile).
- apps/desktop/scripts/set-exe-identity.cjs: Node helper that calls
rcedit's named export to set icon + ProductName/FileDescription/
CompanyName. Node builds argv natively — avoids the PowerShell->exe
->JSON double-escaping that broke the app-builder rcedit path.
- install.ps1 Set-DesktopExeIdentity invokes the script after the build,
before shortcuts. Best-effort: failure keeps the stock icon, never
fails the install. rcedit is a pure PE editor — no signtool, no
winCodeSign, no symlinks.
Verified locally: stamping a copy of the built Hermes.exe embeds the
32x32 icon and sets ProductName=Hermes.
Also fix update-path success-screen flash: in update mode the installer
hands off + exits in ~600ms, so don't route to the 'launch Hermes'
success view (it flashed before the window closed).
Converge update on the same principle as bootstrap: one driver owns all
repo mutation. The desktop becomes a pure consumer that hands off to
Hermes-Setup.exe --update instead of re-implementing git/pip in Electron.
- hermes desktop --build-only: build without launching, so the installer
owns the post-update launch (CLI keeps build logic single-sourced).
- Installer AppMode {Install,Update} from argv; get_mode exposed to the UI.
- Installer self-copies to HERMES_HOME/hermes-setup.exe on install success
(no-op guard during --update re-invocation to avoid the locked-exe copy).
- Installer --update flow (update.rs): wait for the desktop to release the
venv shim, run 'hermes update --yes --gateway' (branch on exit 0/2/other),
then 'hermes desktop --build-only', then launch the rebuilt desktop. Reuses
the bootstrap event channel + progress UI via a synthetic two-stage manifest.
- Desktop applyUpdates() gutted (~105 lines of git/stash/pull/pyproject/pip
removed) -> thin handoff: spawn updater, app.quit() to free the shim.
Detection (checkUpdates, commit changelog, behind-count) kept intact.
- install.ps1 creates Start Menu + Desktop shortcuts to the packed Hermes.exe
(never bare 'hermes desktop', which would rebuild every launch).
Three bugs found in the first VM end-to-end test:
1. install.ps1 -Manifest was called WITHOUT -IncludeDesktop, so the
manifest came back with the 14-stage list (no desktop stage), the
UI showed '14 steps' and Stage-Desktop never ran. Pass the flag to
both the manifest fetch and the per-stage runs — install.ps1 gates
the desktop stage's inclusion on the flag.
2. The Success screen's Launch button silently swallowed the Tauri
error when no Hermes.exe existed (e.g. Stage-Desktop was skipped).
Wire the error through to inline UI with an alert callout, so the
user gets actionable text ('Hermes.exe missing, run hermes desktop
from a terminal') instead of an unresponsive button.
3. The Success screen tells users to run 'hermes desktop' from a
terminal but the CLI only accepted 'hermes gui' — invalid choice
for 'desktop'. Rename the subcommand canonically to 'desktop' with
'gui' as a backwards-compatible alias. Update the _SUBCOMMANDS sets
used by session-flag arg parsing + logging-mode probe so both names
route to the same logic.
Hermes-Setup.exe is a small signed Rust+Tauri binary that drives
scripts/install.ps1 stage-by-stage with a native UI matching the
desktop's design language. Replaces the chicken-and-egg pattern of
shipping a 200MB Electron app whose first launch existed only to
run install.ps1.
The architecture:
Rust backend (src-tauri/):
bootstrap.rs orchestrator -- Tauri commands, stage iteration
install_script.rs resolve install.ps1 (dev checkout, cache, GitHub raw)
powershell.rs spawn powershell, line-stream stdout/stderr, parse JSON
events.rs BootstrapEvent types -- mirror bootstrap-runner.cjs
paths.rs HERMES_HOME resolution + tracing log setup
build.rs bakes BUILD_PIN_COMMIT / BUILD_PIN_BRANCH from
'git rev-parse HEAD' at compile time
React frontend (src/):
Tauri webview rendering 4 screens (welcome / progress / success /
failure), driven by nanostores subscribing to the Rust event stream.
Visual layer reuses the desktop's styles.css wholesale via @import
so the installer and desktop never drift visually.
Distribution:
targets = ['app', 'dmg', 'appimage'] -- no NSIS/MSI wrapper. The
raw target/release/Hermes-Setup.exe IS the artifact on Windows;
.dmg + .app on macOS; AppImage on Linux. One file, double-click,
no installer-installing-an-installer pattern.
Compile-time pinning:
build.rs reads 'git rev-parse HEAD' and emits
cargo:rustc-env=BUILD_PIN_COMMIT=<sha> + BUILD_PIN_BRANCH=<branch>.
bootstrap.rs's option_env!() picks these up so the binary fetches
install.ps1 from the exact SHA it was tested against. CI / release
builds can override via HERMES_BUILD_PIN_COMMIT env var.
Windows manifest:
hermes-setup.manifest declares level='asInvoker' so the
productName 'Hermes Setup' doesn't trip Windows's installer-
detection heuristic and refuse to launch without elevation.
Also declares PerMonitorV2 DPI + UTF-8 active code page + Common
Controls v6.
Limitations of this initial version:
* No code signing -- Windows SmartScreen will warn once on Hermes-Setup.exe
('More info -> Run anyway'). The downstream binaries it produces
(Hermes.exe in win-unpacked/, the hermes CLI) are locally-built and
therefore don't carry MOTW, so they launch without SmartScreen
intervention. Cert procurement tracked separately.
* macOS and Linux build paths defined but untested -- Windows-only V1.
