feat: run on desktop

[RomanKovtyukh]

It includes sqlite configuration for windows, but only tested on Linux. Got an example from here so decided not to remove the Platform.isWindows from there.

Before this change openreads was showing the following errors at the startup if you try running it on desktop:

flutter: [🌎 Easy Localization] [DEBUG] Start
[ERROR:flutter/runtime/dart_vm_initializer.cc(40)] Unhandled Exception: Bad state: databaseFactory not initialized
databaseFactory is only initialized when using sqflite. When using `sqflite_common_ffi`
You must call `databaseFactory = databaseFactoryFfi;` before using global openDatabase API

#0      databaseFactory.<anonymous closure> (package:sqflite_common/src/sqflite_database_factory.dart:29:7)
#1      databaseFactory (package:sqflite_common/src/sqflite_database_factory.dart:33:6)
#2      openDatabase (package:sqflite_common/sqflite.dart:83:10)
#3      DatabaseProvider.createDatabase (package:openreads/database/database_provider.dart:29:18)
<asynchronous suspension>
#4      DatabaseController.getAllBooks (package:openreads/database/database_controler.dart:30:16)
<asynchronous suspension>
#5      BookCubit._migrateCoversFromDatabaseToStorage (package:openreads/logic/cubit/book_cubit.dart:274:27)
<asynchronous suspension>
#6      BookCubit._initLoad (package:openreads/logic/cubit/book_cubit.dart:71:7)
<asynchronous suspension>

flutter: [🌎 Easy Localization] [DEBUG] Init state

#584

[RomanKovtyukh]

Checked the failures:

• will fix the code style in a separate PR
• the intl version was failing locally too until I built it with flutter 3.29.0. So we either need to migrate to both flutter 3.23 and newer intl version if we want to fix this or we need to fix the flutter version to 3.29.0 in CI.

[RomanKovtyukh]

Hi @mateusz-bak, could you please help reviewing this and couple more PRs? Or maybe there is someone else with write permissions who could help?

[mateusz-bak]

Change already made, please rebase

[mateusz-bak]

Change already made, please rebase

[mateusz-bak]

Change already made, please rebase

[mateusz-bak]

Hi! Thanks for the work, looks like a good improvement.

However I don't see linux or windows directories that I suppose were created after running below command:

flutter create --platforms=linux,windows .

Also please rebase to fix conflicts on already done changes.

[amoinier]

Hi! I would like give some help to merge this PR. Could you give me an update on the current status of the PR and any blockers you’re facing? Thanks in advance :)

[RomanKovtyukh]

Hi, I've rebased the changes on top of the current HEAD and added the linux platform directory.

Regarding windows platform directory and build, I didn't add it because I haven't tested it there and won't be able to.

One more thing that is missing yet is an automatic build configuration for linux. We won't be able to distribute the linux version without that.

[armand-leguillou]

Hi! Has it evolved since last month?? (I can't wait to get OpenReads on my desktop bc i don't have a smartphone anymore)

[RomanKovtyukh]

Hi @mateusz-bak, could you please review? The linux build had been added to the test_build.yaml and the linux directory is also in git now.

I've also made the github workflow store debug build artifacts to allow reviewers run a new version without having to build it locally.

[RomanKovtyukh]

BTW folks. While we're waiting for review you can try it out using the build artifacts: https://github.com/mateusz-bak/openreads/actions/runs/19399497883

To use it:

1. Download linux-appbundle.zip
2. unzip it somewhere on your linux machine
3. execute: /path/to/openreads

I did fix everything platform-specific I could fine, but I might've missed something. So let me know if it's crashing or silently ignoring you.

CC: @armand-leguillou, @amoinier, @ironhak, @GLLM

[mateusz-bak]

Great work @RomanKovtyukh I'm starting the review, I'll try to finish it by tomorrow.

[mbeko]

This shows "Cloud backup is not implemented for linux yet."
I think it should be "Linux"

[RomanKovtyukh]

Do you mean "linux" not being with capital "L"?

[RomanKovtyukh]

It's coming from the Platform package, so we'd have to capitalize it ourselves as far as I understand or submit a patch to the Platform package. Don't know which is better TBH.

Hardcoding the whole string with "Linux" would mean that if we want to run it on Windows we'll have to add a separate if statement for that which I'd like to avoid.

[mbeko]

I replied by mail, and my messages have been appended to the main thread instead of this one. I wasn't aware of that behaviour, sorry. I'm posting them here now, and removing from the main one.

Do you mean "linux" not being with capital "L"?

Yes, exactly. Sorry that I wasn't precise!

It's coming from the Platform package, so we'd have to capitalize it ourselves as far as I understand or submit a patch to the Platform package. Don't know which is better TBH.

Hardcoding the whole string with "Linux" would mean that if we want to run it on Windows we'll have to add a separate if statement for that which I'd like to avoid.

I imagine this pull request will take some days before it can be merged. So how about submitting a patch, and if it's not accepted by the time we're ready to merge, we'll capitalise ourselves? I'd definitely not hardcode it

[mbeko]

BTW folks. While we're waiting for review you can try it out using the build artifacts: https://github.com/mateusz-bak/openreads/actions/runs/19399497883

Thanks a lot for your work! 👏 Here's some feedback from a short session of looking around. Although there are some issues, it's usable to a high degree, and I'm very happy to have this awesome app available on Linux 🤩 This is just great!

Functional issues

These are issues that I think would be good to fix before releasing. Note that I'm stuck with Android version 2.9.0 so I can't check exactly if they appear only on the desktop version.

• From the welcome pages, I tried to import a backup that I created on Android, and it said that it's not valid. When I tried it from the settings menu later, it worked
• When the backup import didn't work on the welcome pages, I tried to import the CSV, but when I clicked on the button, no file selection dialogue opened. Also from the settings menu, it doesn't work. Actually, none of the three CSV import options shows a dialogue
• When clicking on a tag in the book list, nothing happens. In a book entry, this shows a list of books with that tag
• Nothing happens when clicking on the button to scan the ISBN barcode. There should be at least a message saying that this isn't available on Linux. If the functionality actually is available, but there's no active camera, the message should say that a camera is needed and must be enabled
• When clicking on the options to create a local backup or to export to CSV, it says that these aren't implemented on Linux yet, but the icons turn into progress animations that don't stop. Then I noticed the laptop's fans started spinning, and the CPU usage went from around 0% to 60-80%. This doesn't happen for the cloud backup option
• It's not clear to me why the local backup or CSV export wouldn't work on desktop because that doesn't seem platform-specific, and I think these would be quite important to have
• It seems files like the book database and the cover images are put directly in the home folder. This is usually frowned upon, and the recommended practice is to follow the XDG base directory specification. These files would go to $XDG_DATA_HOME (~/.local/share by default) in my opinion. I don't know if there are more files that are created by the app. If so, they should be put in an appropriate folder, too
• I didn't find the settings button at first because it's covered by the "Debug" indicator. I guess this won't be a problem in the final release, but when we disable the debug mode, we should check that the button is actually displayed

Possible UI improvements

These issues are related to migrating the UI of a mobile app to the desktop. In my opinion, they can wait until after the first release.

• On the welcome screen, it's not immediately obvious how to get to the next page. I tried clicking, holding and dragging, and clicking on the left and the right side. It took me a while to realise that I have to click on the dots at the bottom. They're also pretty small and not that easy to target
• The dark mode style option doesn't make much sense to me on the desktop. Unless maybe someone wants to run the app on a Linux phone with an AMOLED screen
• There's much more screen estate on the desktop so the maximum configurable grid size could be greater than just four
• Because of the additional space available, the detailed grid could display more than just the title
• When editing a book, the text fields are very long due to a desktop screen being wide. This makes especially the content of fields with more text, like review or notes, difficult to read. I think there should be a reasonable maximum value for the width of the whole form
• The book cover is displayed unnecessarily large when editing a book
• In the statistics, the graph widgets are large, the bars thin and spread out, and the numbers very small. I would set a limit on the widget size, set the bar width such that the bars fill the whole widget width, and scale the font proportionally
• The scroll bars appear only when actually scrolling, so sometimes it's not obvious that there's more content to see. It might be a good idea to show them permanently
• The window has no icon and the title says "openreads". I think it should be "Openreads" with capital "O"
• In the sort/filter dialogue, it's not obvious how to scroll the tag list vertically, at least not on my laptop without a mouse. It's a ThinkPad, so finally I managed by holding the button representing the middle mouse button, and moving the trackpoint left and right

[RomanKovtyukh]

Thanks for the review, @mbeko. Really good findings you have there.

From the welcome pages, I tried to import a backup that I created on Android, and it said that it's not valid. When I tried it from the settings menu later, it worked

I'm kind of able to reproduce this or similar issue sometimes: openreads is saying "the file is not a valid opereads backup", but then it's working perfectly fine on subsequent runs. Debugging showed that the file is really the right backup, so we must've returned nil instead of a version from the _checkInfoFileVersion and that looks like some race condition to me.

Nothing happens when clicking on the button to scan the ISBN barcode. There should be at least a message saying that this isn't available on Linux. If the functionality actually is available, but there's no active camera, the message should say that a
camera is needed and must be enabled

Sure, need to fix it before releasing.

When clicking on the options to create a local backup or to export to CSV, it says that these aren't implemented on Linux yet, but the icons turn into progress animations that don't stop. Then I noticed the laptop's fans started spinning, and the CPU
usage went from around 0% to 60-80%. This doesn't happen for the cloud backup option

Yeah, need to fix this. I've seen it, but didn't pay attention since I didn't wait long enough to notice the CPU consumption.

It's not clear to me why the local backup or CSV export wouldn't work on desktop because that doesn't seem platform-specific, and I think these would be quite important to have

Agree

It seems files like the book database and the cover images are put directly in the home folder. This is usually frowned upon, and the recommended practice is to follow the XDG base directory specification. These files would go to $XDG_DATA_HOME (~/.
local/share by default) in my opinion. I don't know if there are more files that are created by the app. If so, they should be put in an appropriate folder, too

Good point. I need to check since I've seen files in ~/.local/ too. Would be good to have that as part settings eventually so that we can share the files with syncthing on mobile platforms.

I didn't find the settings button at first because it's covered by the "Debug" indicator. I guess this won't be a problem in the final release, but when we disable the debug mode, we should check that the button is actually displayed

Yeah, had the same trouble. On the release builds it's working well -- just no "Debug" indicator.

Still need to check the rest of the issues you mentioned. Thanks again for the review.

[RomanKovtyukh]

From the welcome pages, I tried to import a backup that I created on Android, and it said that it's not valid. When I tried it from the settings menu later, it worked

I'm kind of able to reproduce this or similar issue sometimes: openreads is saying "the file is not a valid opereads backup", but then it's working perfectly fine on subsequent runs. Debugging showed that the file is really the right backup, so we must've returned nil instead of a version from the _checkInfoFileVersion and that looks like some race condition to me.

ok, this is definitely a race condition of _checkInfoFileVersion with extractArchiveToDisk: we'll need to synchronously extract /tmp/info.txt first, then run asynchronous extraction of the rest and then continue checking the info file version.

Reproduced this way:

1. prepare a backup and clean up the system

# add a couple of heavy files to a backup
zip -9 Openreads-2025_6_16-11_7_54.backup ~/Downloads/*.pdf`
# delete the /tmp/info.txt
rm /tmp/info.txt

2. run openreads and try restoring the backup

Added commit where I'm adding a concept of an "internal error" asking users to report what happened. It shouldn't be this rushed and shouldn't be part of this PR in my opinion, so I'd like to hear @mateusz-bak opinion on this. But anyway I'd keep the if null check in one form or another even after fixing the race condition.