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The desktop app

The Windows front end, and the one the other two are measured against: C# / WinForms on .NET 10 (net10.0-windows). Everything only this app uses lives in this folder — one .cs per window, the button glyphs, the publish profile and the installer.

What is on screen and where is docs/UI-SPEC.md, which also states the rule that the web build is a port of this one rather than a redesign of it.

Requirements

  • Running the published build: 64-bit Windows 10/11. Nothing else — the self-contained build bundles the .NET runtime.
  • Building from source: the .NET 10 SDK.

Build & run

From the repository root:

dotnet run --project Desktop/LabEquipmentController.csproj

Or open LabEquipmentController.slnx in Visual Studio 2022 (17.14 or later, for the XML solution format) and press F5.

If the build fails with a file-lock error, a previous LabEquipmentController.exe is still running (Visual Studio also holds Core.pdb). Close it, or:

powershell -c "Get-Process LabEquipmentController -EA SilentlyContinue | Stop-Process -Force"

Publish a single-file executable

A self-contained, single-file profile for 64-bit Windows is included:

dotnet publish Desktop/LabEquipmentController.csproj -p:PublishProfile=win-x64

The result is one LabEquipmentController.exe (~48 MB, runtime included) under Desktop/bin/Release/publish/win-x64/. It runs on a clean Windows machine with no .NET install.

For a much smaller, framework-dependent build (requires the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime on the target machine) publish without self-containment instead:

dotnet publish Desktop/LabEquipmentController.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained false -p:PublishSingleFile=true

Build the installer

The releases page offers both shapes: a portable zip carrying the self-contained build (~46 MB, runs anywhere), and a setup.exe carrying the framework-dependent one (~4 MB, wants the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime and offers to fetch it if missing). The installer is Inno Setup 6; its script is in installer/.

Publish the framework-dependent payload into the directory the script expects, then compile it:

dotnet publish Desktop/LabEquipmentController.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained false -p:PublishSingleFile=true -p:PublishDir=bin\Release\publish\win-x64-fd\
"%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Inno Setup 6\ISCC.exe" Desktop\installer\LabEquipmentController.iss

The result is Desktop\bin\LabEquipmentController-v<version>-setup.exe. It installs per-user into %LocalAppData%\Programs with no UAC prompt (the app needs no administrator rights); the wizard offers a machine-wide install, and /ALLUSERS does the same from the command line. Verify a build end to end — install, launch, uninstall — with:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File Desktop\installer\Test-Installer.ps1

Where things are

One folder per area, the same words Core/ and Tests/ use, so a window, the logic under it and its tests all sit under the same heading.

Path What
Program.cs Entry point → MainForm
Bench/ MainForm — scan, discovered instruments, console tabs — plus InstrumentConsole and the window a tab detaches into
Scripting/ Both editors (ScriptForm, SequenceForm), the colouriser and completion (ScriptEditor), the Snippets menu, the language reference
Ai/ ScriptAiForm (the conversation, the drafts, the catalog check), DatasheetExtractForm, AiSettingsForm, the connection book, and the DPAPI key store
Catalogs/ CommandLibraryForm (all 36, with the guide beside them) and CommandReferenceForm (one family's, beside its console)
Capture/ WaveformForm, ScreenCaptureForm, MultimeterReadoutForm
Results/ ResultsPanel and ResultPlotPanel — the recorded table and its plot
Ui/ ButtonStyle (the metrics every button is built with), AppIcons, SplitLayout, AboutForm
Assets/icons/ The glyph artwork, embedded into the executable
installer/ Inno Setup script, and its install/launch/uninstall smoke test

Folders group; namespaces do not — every type here stays in LabEquipmentController, so nothing above changed a using. See ARCHITECTURE.md for why that is deliberate.

Settings are stored per-user at %AppData%\LabEquipmentController\settings.json, and the AI key beside them, encrypted with DPAPI for the signed-in Windows account.

Tests

There is no end-to-end suite for this app: it is the reference the web build is measured against, and everything it does that is not pixels lives in Core, covered by Tests/. UI changes are verified by running the app and looking at it — docs/SPEC.md §16 lists the traps a harness meets here, each of which has cost real time.