Ramble

Ramble is a speech-to-text transcription application that provides real-time transcription using the Whisper model.

Project Structure

ramble/
├── cmd/
│   └── ramble/         # Main application code
├── pkg/                # Package code for reusable components
│   └── transcription/  # Transcription engine implementation
├── scripts/            # Build and installation scripts
│   ├── build-dist.sh   # Main distribution builder
│   ├── linux/          # Linux-specific scripts
│   └── windows/        # Windows-specific scripts
├── dist/               # Distribution output (created by build scripts)
│   ├── linux/          # Linux distribution files
│   └── windows/        # Windows distribution files
├── assets/             # Application assets (icons, etc.)
└── models/             # Default speech recognition models

Building Ramble

Ramble has been simplified to make building and development easier. We now use a vendor-based approach for managing the whisper.cpp dependency.

Quick Start

For a quick build:

# Set up the vendor directory with necessary libraries and headers
./scripts/setup-vendor.sh

# Build and run the application
./scripts/run.sh

This approach ensures all required libraries are properly copied to the vendor directory, avoiding path issues and broken symlinks.

Customizing the Whisper.cpp Version

You can specify a version tag when building whisper.cpp:

./scripts/build-whisper.sh v1.5.2

Development Environment

The project structure has been simplified:

• vendor/whisper/ - Contains the minimal required whisper.cpp files
  • include/ - Header files
  • lib/ - Library files
• No full whisper.cpp submodule required

CI/CD

Our GitHub Actions workflow has been simplified to:

1. Build the whisper.cpp library for each platform
2. Store only the needed files in the vendor directory
3. Build the application using these vendor files
4. Package for distribution

This approach makes builds cleaner, faster, and more reliable.

Building the Application

Prerequisites

For Linux Build

• Go 1.18 or later
• GCC and development libraries
• ALSA development libraries (libasound2-dev)
• GTK3 development libraries (libgtk-3-dev)

For Windows Cross-Compilation

• MinGW-w64 cross-compiler (x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc)
• Windows libraries (placed in lib/windows/)

Build Process

To build distribution packages for all supported platforms:

./scripts/build-dist.sh

To build for a specific platform only:

./scripts/build-dist.sh linux
# or
./scripts/build-dist.sh windows

The resulting distribution packages will be created in the dist/ directory.

Installation

Linux

Extract the Linux distribution package and run:

./install.sh

Alternatively, for portable use without installation:

./ramble.sh

Windows

Extract the Windows distribution package and run either:

• install.ps1 (PowerShell, recommended)
• install.bat (Command Prompt)

Development

Running the Application Locally

# From project root
./scripts/run.sh

Working with Go Bindings for Whisper.cpp

Ramble uses the Whisper.cpp library for speech-to-text transcription through the official Go bindings from the Whisper.cpp repository, which provides several benefits:

1. Performance: Direct integration with the C++ library without subprocess overhead
2. Reliability: Avoids many potential failure points of subprocess-based approaches
3. Real-time streaming: Native support for streaming audio transcription
4. Resource efficiency: No need to launch external processes

Setting up Whisper.cpp with Go Bindings

1. Build the Go bindings for Whisper.cpp:

   ./scripts/build-go-bindings.sh

2. Troubleshooting Go bindings:

   • If you encounter compilation failures, make sure you have the necessary dependencies installed:

     # Ubuntu/Debian
     sudo apt-get install build-essential libomp-dev

   • If you encounter import errors, rebuild the whisper.cpp components:

     ./scripts/build-go-bindings.sh --clean

Adding Libraries

Place platform-specific libraries in:

• lib/*.so for Linux shared objects
• lib/windows/*.dll for Windows DLLs

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.