Building and Running on Windows

This guide provides instructions for setting up your environment and running the Maestro application on a Windows machine.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following installed:

Additionally, you will need the Visual Studio Build Tools to compile native Node.js modules used in this project.

Download the Build Tools:
- Go to the Visual Studio Downloads page.
- You may need to log in with a Microsoft account.
- Download the Build Tools for Visual Studio 2022.
Run the Installer:
- When the installer launches, you will be prompted to select workloads.
- Check the box for Desktop development with C++.
- Proceed with the installation.
Verify the Setup:
- After the installation is complete, open a PowerShell terminal in the project root.
- Run npm ci to install dependencies. If you have already run npm install, you can run npx electron-rebuild to rebuild the native modules.

There are two ways to run the application in development mode on Windows: using the provided script or by running the steps manually.

The easiest way to start the development environment is to use the dev:win npm script. This script automates the entire process.

Open a PowerShell terminal and run:

npm run dev:win

This will handle all the necessary build steps and launch the application.

If you encounter issues with the dev:win script or prefer to run the steps manually, follow this procedure.

Start the Electron main process: Open a new PowerShell terminal and run the following command:

npm run build:prompts; npx tsc -p tsconfig.main.json; $env:NODE_ENV='development'; npx electron .

This will launch the application in development mode with hot-reloading for the renderer.