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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

RDesk 1.0.6.9000 (dev)

New features

  • Cross-platform foundation: Ported the core build system and launcher architecture to macOS and Linux.
  • Web Dialogs Fallback: Added HTML5/JS web-based file dialog fallbacks (dialog_open, dialog_save, dialog_folder, message_box, and dialog_color) for Linux and macOS. When running on non-Windows platforms, these methods now open beautiful, responsive, and animated glassmorphism web dialog overlays in the WebView instead of invoking Win32 APIs (preventing indefinite hangs). File open dialog automatically reads selected files as base64 and securely decodes/writes them to temporary paths on the R backend.

RDesk 1.0.6

New features

  • Live Hot Reload: Added rdesk_watch() to dynamically watch and load changes in UI assets (www/) and R scripts (R/) during development without restarting the app.
  • Async Progress API: Added async_progress() wrapper enabling background tasks to securely communicate progress updates back to the WebView2 loading screen.
  • Multi-User Windows Storage Isolation: Implemented rdesk_storage() key-value managers (app$prefs, app$recent, app$shared) automatically mapping settings to %APPDATA%, %LOCALAPPDATA%, and %PROGRAMDATA% with permissions checks and temp fallbacks.
  • Hardened Single Instance Lock: launcher now detects duplicate launches, restores minimized windows, and brings the active window to the foreground before exiting the duplicate instance.
  • mori is now listed in Suggests. Apps that load large datasets and dispatch repeated async() workers can optionally use mori::share() to place data in OS-level shared memory (Win32 file mapping on Windows), sending ~300 bytes to each worker instead of a full serialised copy. The async() wrapper requires no code changes - mori’s ALTREP objects serialise as their shared memory handle transparently. See the new Cookbook recipe “Share large datasets across async workers with mori” for a complete before/after example and benchmark context (~42% wall-clock improvement in the benchmark on 8-worker parallel operations against large data).

Bug fixes

  • build_app() now strips development artifacts from the bundled app/ directory before packaging. Previously, if the developer’s workspace contained an renv setup, the bundled .Rprofile would source renv/activate.R on startup, hijacking .libPaths() away from the bundle’s packages/library/ and causing an immediate Error Code 1 crash. The following paths are now permanently excluded from the bundle: .Rprofile, .Renviron, renv/, renv.lock, .git/, .gitignore, .gitattributes, .Rproj.user/, .Rhistory, .RData, tests/, .DS_Store. A message is printed during build listing what was excluded. Apps built without these artifacts are unaffected.

RDesk 1.0.5 (2026-04-22) - Runtime Fix

CRAN release: 2026-04-22

Bug fixes

  • build_app() now copies the developer’s currently running R installation as the app runtime by default (runtime_dir = NULL). Previously it downloaded a fixed R 4.4.2 portable build which caused crashes in distributed apps when packages had been compiled for a newer R version (e.g. 4.5.x via renv). The version mismatch between the downloaded runtime and the bundled packages produced a cryptic shared-library ABI error on launch.

  • Added rdesk_detect_r_home() (internal) which resolves the developer’s R installation path via R.home() with a clear error if it is not found.

  • Added rdesk_copy_r_runtime() (internal) which selectively copies bin/, library/, etc/, modules/, and include/ from the source R installation into the bundle staging directory.

  • The legacy download behaviour is preserved for CI environments or air-gapped scenarios via runtime_dir = "download". A warning is printed advising users to prefer the default to avoid version mismatch.

RDesk 1.0.4 (2026-04-01) - First CRAN Release 🎉

CRAN release: 2026-03-31

CRAN compliance fixes

  • Replaced all \dontrun{} with if(interactive()){} or \donttest{} as appropriate. Functions that open native windows are now wrapped in if(interactive()){}.
  • Executable R code chunks added to all six vignettes and verified to run cleanly under R CMD check.
  • All file-writing operations now default to tempdir(). No default paths write to the user’s home filespace.
  • on.exit() added immediately after every setwd() and options() call inside build_app().
  • Replaced all installed.packages() calls with requireNamespace() or system.file().
  • Added copyright holders for all vendored third-party code to Authors@R with cph roles: Serge Zaitsev (webview.h), Niels Lohmann (nlohmann/json), Microsoft Corporation (WebView2 SDK). Created inst/COPYRIGHTS.

RDesk 1.0.0 (2026-03-22)

New features

  • Native Window Management: Added app$set_size(), app$set_position(), app$minimize(), app$maximize(), app$restore(), app$fullscreen(), and app$always_on_top().
  • Enhanced Native Dialogs: Implemented app$dialog_folder(), app$message_box() (OK/Yes/No/Cancel with icons), and app$dialog_color().
  • System Integration:
    • Recursive Menus: Native Win32 menu bars now support arbitrarily deep nesting and checkable items.
    • System Tray Context Menus: Added app$set_tray_menu() for native right-click interaction.
    • Global Hotkeys: Added app$register_hotkey() for system-wide keyboard shortcuts.
    • Clipboard: Added app$clipboard_read() and app$clipboard_write().
  • Lifecycle & Stability Hardening:
    • Anti-Zombie Watchdog: Native launcher now auto-terminates if the parent R process dies.
    • Single-Instance Lock: Prevents running multiple copies of the same application.
    • Close Interception: Added app$on_close() to intercept or cancel window exit attempts.
    • Persistent Logging: Success and error logs are now written to %LOCALAPPDATA%/RDesk.
  • Auto-Updater: Added app$check_update() to detect and link to remote application updates.
  • renv integration: The RDesk development environment and built bundles are now lockable via renv.lock for reproducible distribution.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed COM reference count leaks and Unicode path handling in the native launcher.
  • Resolved R6 namespace collisions during complex application initialization.
  • Hardened build_app(dry_run = TRUE) for rapid environment validation.
  • Fixed plot rendering synchronization in background worker pools.

RDesk 0.9.0 (2026-03-19)

Breaking changes

  • Removed httpuv dependency entirely. Apps built with earlier versions must be rebuilt with the new launcher.

New features

  • Zero-port native IPC architecture using WebView2 PostWebMessageAsString and stdin/stdout pipe.
  • Virtual hostname mapping via SetVirtualHostNameToFolderMapping – app assets load from disk with no HTTP server.
  • Three-tier async engine: async() wrapper, rdesk_async(), and direct mirai access. 5.9x faster task startup vs callr alone.
  • Loading overlay system with progress bar, cancellation, and toast notifications built into the framework.
  • build_app() now supports build_installer = TRUE for InnoSetup Windows installer generation.
  • rdesk_create_app() scaffold generates a complete working app structure ready to run.
  • GitHub Actions CI/CD with three workflows: R-CMD-check, build-app, and release.
  • Comprehensive error logging – crash.log and rdesk_startup.log written on failure. Native Windows popup on crash.
  • System tray, native menus, file dialogs, toast notifications.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed bundled dialog, tray, notify, and IPC command handling in App.R so packaged apps no longer try to write to a null window process handle.
  • Hardened launcher shutdown, notification handling, request IDs, menu/tray updates, and save-dialog Unicode handling across the native C++ launcher and window.R.
  • Fixed bundled stub logging and stdout handling so packaged apps preserve IPC while still writing crash diagnostics.
  • Fixed scaffolded apps and demo apps so bundled mode no longer sinks stdout, app paths resolve more reliably, and generated tests/plots use safer defaults.
  • Fixed build_app() package bundling, temp cleanup, empty-directory copies, and added explicit portable-R strategies via portable_r_method and runtime_dir.
  • Fixed GitHub Actions bundled-app workflows to use explicit installer runtime provisioning and current setup actions.
  • Fixed COM reference count leak in C++ launcher on shutdown.
  • Replaced hardcoded personal paths with dynamic environment variable lookups in build.R.
  • Fixed duplicate publisher parameter in build_app() signature.
  • Corrected R-CMD-check YAML quoting for args and error-on fields.
  • Removed dead httpuv private fields from App R6 class.
  • Fixed @export tags incorrectly placed on private R6 methods.
  • Unicode path handling hardened using MultiByteToWideChar throughout C++ launcher.

Internal changes

  • IPC message envelope standardised with id, type, version, payload, timestamp fields across R and JavaScript.
  • Version centralised via getOption(“rdesk.ipc_version”).
  • CI guard added – headless environments skip native window init.
  • mirai daemon pool pre-warmed at Apprun()andshutdowncleanlyatApprun() and shut down cleanly at Appcleanup().