Internal
Public Access
ksmithandClaude Sonnet 5
4fca8fce41
Implements RFC 6143's Tight encoding: a compression-control byte (low 4 bits reset one of 4 persistent zlib streams; high nibble selects Fill/JPEG/Basic mode) followed by Fill's 3-byte solid color, JPEG's compact-length-prefixed baseline JPEG covering the whole rectangle (decoded via libjpeg-turbo directly, not QImage's plugin, to avoid a packaging-dependent runtime failure mode), or Basic mode's compact-length-prefixed zlib payload plus a filter (Copy, Palette, or Gradient) applied after decompression. Unlike Hextile/ZRLE, Tight has no internal tiling -- one rectangle is one filtered/compressed unit. The three filters live in vnc_pixel_codecs.h/.cpp alongside the Hextile/ZRLE decoders. Adds find_package(JPEG REQUIRED) + JPEG::JPEG as a new build dependency (confirmed available via libjpeg-turbo on this dev machine). 5 new tests cover Fill, Basic+Copy, Basic+Palette, JPEG (round-tripped through a real libjpeg-turbo-encoded fixture, compared with tolerance since JPEG is lossy), and the stream-reset flag correctly tearing down and reinitializing a targeted stream rather than erroring on stale state. Known, documented gap: this decoder always treats Basic-mode payloads as zlib-compressed; the real protocol allows very small payloads to skip compression, which couldn't be verified with confidence against the RFC text alone and is narrow enough in practice (tiny solid areas are virtually always sent as Fill instead) to leave unhandled for now -- it fails that one rectangle's decode cleanly rather than misinterpreting it silently. The Gradient filter is implemented from the spec description but is the least exercised of the three in this pass. Live-verified against the TightVNC test server that nothing regressed; that server still consistently chose Raw for actual framebuffer content regardless of announced encodings, so Tight's live decode path isn't independently confirmed against a real server here either -- the unit tests are the primary evidence. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
OrbitHub
OrbitHub is a cross-platform native desktop app for managing and launching remote sessions from one place.
It is implemented in C++17 with Qt6 Widgets and built with CMake.
Supported target platforms:
- Windows
- Linux
- macOS
Current Status
OrbitHub is in active development.
- Milestones completed: M0-M9
- Current milestone: Milestone 10 (v1.0 Stabilization)
- Latest checkpoint tag:
v2026.9.15 - VNC (M6) covers standard VNC Authentication and no-auth servers; see docs/PROGRESS.md for known gaps (Apple Screen Sharing auth, compression encodings, resize, cursor sync, clipboard)
Progress and milestone details:
Latest release (installers for Windows, Linux, and macOS):
User Guide:
- docs/USER_GUIDE.md (also available as a PDF attached to each release, and in-app via
Help -> User Guide)
Screenshots
Profiles organized into folders, with protocol, host, and tags shown at a glance. (Sample data shown; not real hosts.)
An interactive SSH terminal session in a tab, with the event log below.
An embedded RDP session in a tab.
Implemented Features
Profile Management
- SQLite-backed profile storage
- Create, edit, delete profiles
- Protocol-aware profile validation (SSH/RDP/VNC)
- Profile search and sorting
- Tags support
- Folder/subfolder support
ListandFoldersprofile views- Right-click profile tree actions:
- New Folder
- New Connection
- Drag-and-drop profile moves between folders with persistence
Session Experience
- Multi-tab session window
- Auto-connect on tab open
- Disconnect on tab close
- Session state indicators on tabs
- Timestamped event log with filtering and export
SSH
- Embedded interactive terminal (in-app typing)
- Theme support (
Dark,Light,Solarized Dark) - Password and private-key auth flows
- Known-hosts policy support
RDP
- Embedded in-window RDP rendering surface (no external launcher)
- Keyboard/mouse input forwarding
- Resize handling and resolution renegotiation
- Domain-aware authentication support
- RDP security/performance profile options
App UX
- App icon and themed About dialog
Filemenu:- New Profile
- New Folder
- Quit
Helpmenu:- About OrbitHub
Build and Run
Detailed platform instructions:
Quick start (Linux/macOS with Ninja):
cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja
cmake --build build
./build/orbithub
Packaging
Detailed packaging instructions for all platforms:
Linux (.deb):
./packaging/linux/build-deb.sh
Linux (Flatpak):
./packaging/flatpak/build-flatpak.sh
Windows (Inno Setup installer):
.\packaging\windows\build-installer.ps1
macOS (.dmg):
./packaging/macos/build-dmg.sh
Dependencies
Core dependencies:
- Qt 6 (Widgets, SQL)
- CMake 3.21+
- C++17 toolchain
Protocol/runtime dependencies:
- SSH client (
ssh) available onPATHfor SSH sessions
Bundled/vendored third-party components:
- KodoTerm
- libvterm
- FreeRDP/WinPR
Licensing
Project license:
- MIT (see LICENSE)
License links:
- MIT License: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
- GNU LGPLv3: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.html
- Apache License 2.0: https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Important third-party license notes:
- Qt6 is dynamically linked in this project build setup.
- Qt6 is used under LGPLv3 terms in this project build setup.
- KodoTerm and libvterm are MIT-licensed.
- FreeRDP/WinPR is Apache-2.0 licensed.
Repository license files:
- Project: LICENSE
- KodoTerm: third_party/KodoTerm/LICENSE
- FreeRDP: third_party/FreeRDP/LICENSE
See in-app Help -> About OrbitHub for license links and third-party inventory.
Repository Structure
src/- application source codedocs/- build guide, spec, and progress trackingthird_party/- vendored third-party dependenciesbuild/- local build output (generated)
Notes
- Passwords are requested at connect time and are not stored in the profile database.
- VNC support covers standard VNC Authentication and no-auth servers (e.g. TigerVNC, x11vnc, TightVNC); it doesn't yet reach macOS's built-in Screen Sharing server, which uses a different authentication scheme (see docs/PROGRESS.md, Milestone 6).