Files
screen_cast/docs/RUNBOOK.md
T
fegger 7be8d59d07 feat(network): implement Phase 6 LAN discovery and session signaling
Add mDNS/DNS-SD discovery and JSON session negotiation so two peers on
a LAN connect without hard-coded addresses.

- Discovery (Avahi threaded-poll client): the receiver announces
  _screencast._tcp with its signaling port; senders browse and resolve
  peers. Strict lock ordering (poll lock before state mutex) keeps the
  callbacks deadlock-free; name collisions rename via
  avahi_alternative_service_name.
- Signaling: one JSON object per newline-terminated TCP line. The
  receiver hosts a server (port 5005) and answers session offers with
  its RTP port; senders connect, offer, and stream to the negotiated
  endpoint. WebSocket was deferred: no WS library is installed, the
  skill permits plain TCP, and the wire format is transport-agnostic.
- Dual-stack transports: this machine resolves its own services over
  IPv6, so getaddrinfo now runs AF_UNSPEC and listeners bind IPv6 with
  IPV6_V6ONLY=0 (IPv4 fallback), covering UDP and TCP alike. The
  signaling client shutdown now uses shutdown() so a reader blocked in
  recv() cannot hang the join (a plain close() does not wake it).
- CLI: --discover lists receivers (deduped to one entry per host);
  --send auto-disovers when exactly one receiver is found; --peer
  targets a receiver directly; --signaling-port overrides the default.

Validation: meson test 5/5 (new signaling round-trip test), valgrind
clean. End-to-end over loopback: --discover finds the announced
receiver, a probe negotiated a session and streamed 60 frames over
both IPv4 and IPv6, and the receiver reported stream started. mDNS
resolution was verified against avahi-browse as an independent
reference.
2026-09-07 12:16:34 +02:00

3.8 KiB

Runbook — build and validation commands

Reusable validation steps for this repository. Run the relevant ones before considering a change complete.

Build and test

meson setup build          # once
meson compile -C build
meson test -C build --print-errorlogs

Memory and correctness checks (codec changes)

Run the codec round-trip test under valgrind after touching the encoder or decoder:

valgrind --leak-check=full --errors-for-leak-kinds=definite \
    build/tests/test_codec_roundtrip

Expected: no "definitely lost" bytes and no "Invalid read/write" errors. FFmpeg may keep some "still reachable" allocations at exit; that is normal.

This check caught two real defects in the Phase 2 decoder: a per-packet payload leak and an unpadded extradata buffer over-read. Keep using it.

Capture smoke test (Phase 3, manual)

Requires a running desktop session with xdg-desktop-portal and a backend that implements the ScreenCast portal (e.g. Hyprland, GNOME, KDE). The portal shows an interactive source picker, so this cannot run unattended.

meson compile -C build                       # builds tools/capture_smoke
./build/tools/capture_smoke 10 out.h264      # captures 10 frames
ffprobe -v error -show_entries stream=codec_name,width,height out.h264

Expected: the tool prints the negotiated resolution/format/stride and writes a non-empty file; ffprobe reports codec_name=h264 and the correct width/height. The encoder prepends its Annex-B SPS/PPS extradata so the file is a self-contained elementary stream.

If you see impl_ext_end_proxy called from wrong context warnings, a PipeWire proxy operation ran without the thread-loop lock — all pw calls that send messages (connect, stream, core) must happen under pw_thread_loop_lock.

LAN discovery and signaling (Phase 6)

Two machines on the same LAN (mDNS via avahi-daemon, which must be running on both):

screencast --receive                # machine A: announce + window
screencast --send                   # machine B: discovers A, negotiates, streams
screencast --discover               # list receivers on the LAN

--send without --peer requires exactly one discovered receiver. Use --peer HOST[:PORT] to target a receiver directly (signaling port defaults to 5005), e.g. --peer 192.168.178.20.

Operational note: never kill -9 a running receiver — a SIGKILLed process cannot withdraw its mDNS registration, and avahi-daemon then keeps broken records for that service name until they expire (~75 min), making resolution time out for every peer. If that happens, systemctl restart avahi-daemon clears it. Always stop screencast with Ctrl-C (SIGTERM).

Sender / receiver loopback (Phase 5, manual)

Two terminals on the same desktop session:

./build/src/app/screencast --receive        # terminal 1: window appears
./build/src/app/screencast --send           # terminal 2: portal source picker

Expected: the receiver window shows the captured desktop in near real time. If the receiver starts after the sender, a few non-existing PPS decode errors are normal until the next keyframe arrives (the GOP is ~0.4s); video should appear within a second. Stop either side with Ctrl-C. Optional flags: --port, --peer HOST[:PORT], --bitrate KBPS, --target window.

Notes: the encoder runs a VBV that caps keyframe bursts to roughly two frame periods of bytes, and the receiver requests a 4MB UDP receive buffer (clamped by net.core.rmem_max). For very high --bitrate values, raise net.core.rmem_max on the receiver machine.

The headless equivalent runs as part of meson test (udp loopback test): synthetic frames → encode → packetize → localhost UDP → depacketize → decode, no portal or window involved.

Formatting

find include src tests -type f \( -name '*.cpp' -o -name '*.h' \) \
    -exec clang-format --dry-run --Werror {} +