Self-hosting¶

Run your own SomeDesk server and build the clients.

Building and running¶

Requirements (Debian/Ubuntu): build-essential pkg-config clang libfontconfig1-dev libxkbcommon-dev libxkbcommon-x11-dev libxcb1-dev libx11-dev libpipewire-0.3-dev libspa-0.2-dev postgresql (tests: xvfb xsel, and for the Wayland test gnome-shell xdg-desktop-portal-gnome pipewire wireplumber).

cargo build --release

# Server (creates its schema and a self-signed certificate on first start)
DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:pass@localhost/somedesk \
  target/release/somedesk-server --listen 0.0.0.0:21116 --data-dir ./data

# Client (pins the server certificate on first use)
target/release/somedesk --server your.server.example

--profile NAME runs independent client instances side by side (separate credentials).

Packaging¶

What	How	Output
Server container	`podman build -f packaging/server/Dockerfile -t somedesk-server .` (or `docker build`)	image (≈95 MB)
Server + PostgreSQL	`SOMEDESK_DB_PASSWORD=… podman compose -f packaging/server/compose.yaml up -d`	two containers
Server on a host	`cargo deb -p somedesk-server` (systemd unit, `somedesk` user, `/etc/somedesk/server.env`) or `packaging/server/somedesk-server.service`	`.deb`
Linux client	`cargo deb -p somedesk-app` (desktop entry, icons)	`.deb`
Linux client, any distribution	`packaging/linux/build-appimage.sh` (bundles its libraries except glibc, graphics and PipeWire; build on an old distribution such as Debian 12)	`.AppImage`
Arch Linux client	`packaging/aur/test.sh` (builds the AUR packages `somedesk` and `somedesk-bin` in an Arch container)	`.pkg.tar.zst`
Windows client	`packaging/windows/build-zip.sh` (cross-built with MinGW; icon embedded)	`.zip` with `somedesk.exe` and runtime DLLs
macOS client	`packaging/macos/make-app.sh` on a Mac (unsigned)	`SomeDesk.app` + `.zip`
Android app	`packaging/android/build-apk.sh` (needs the Android SDK and NDK; see the script)	`.apk` for phones and emulators

The .debs depend on the glibc of the machine that built them: build release packages on the oldest distribution you want to support. Install cargo-deb with cargo install cargo-deb.