orbithub/docs/PROGRESS.md

OrbitHub Progress

Milestone 0 - Restart in C++/Qt Widgets

Status: Completed

Delivered:

• Fresh C++17/Qt6 Widgets scaffold with CMake
• ProfilesWindow (QMainWindow) with search, profile list, and New/Edit/Delete controls
• Double-click in Profiles opens a SessionWindow
• SessionWindow (QMainWindow) with QTabWidget
• Placeholder tab content showing OrbitHub Native Surface
• main.cpp wiring for application startup
• Cross-platform build command guide in docs/BUILDING.md

Git:

• Tag: v0-m0-done

Milestone 1 - Storage and CRUD

Status: Completed

Delivered:

• SQLite integration via Qt SQL (QSQLITE)
• Persistent profile database bootstrap (profiles table)
• Profiles CRUD (New / Edit / Delete) in ProfilesWindow
• Search-backed profile listing from storage
• Double-click connect opens SessionWindow tab with selected profile name

Git:

• Tag: v0-m1-done

Milestone 2 - Profile Details and Connect Lifecycle

Status: Completed

Delivered:

• SQLite schema migration for profile details (host, port, username, protocol, auth_mode)
• New ProfileDialog form for New/Edit profile workflows
• Profiles list now shows endpoint metadata and supports search by name or host
• Connect now loads complete profile details into SessionWindow
• Session tab lifecycle status updates (Connecting, Connected, Failed) via non-blocking timer flow

Git:

• Tag: v0-m2-done

Milestone 3 - Real SSH Backend and Session Controls

Status: Completed

Delivered:

• Backend architecture introduced (SessionBackend + protocol-specific implementations)
• Worker-thread backend execution for connection lifecycle operations
• Real SSH process backend (ssh) with connect/disconnect/reconnect
• Unsupported protocol backend with explicit not-implemented messaging (RDP/VNC)
• Session tab controls: Connect, Disconnect, Reconnect, Copy Error
• Connect-time credential flow (password prompt / private-key path selection)
• Session event log pane with timestamps and user-friendly error mapping
• SQLite profile schema migration for private_key_path and known_hosts_policy

Git:

• Tag: v0-m3-done

Milestone 4 - Interactive SSH Session UX

Status: Completed

Delivered:

• Embedded interactive SSH terminal using KodoTerm + vendored libvterm
• Native in-terminal typing for SSH sessions (no separate input box)
• ANSI/color rendering with selectable terminal themes (Dark, Light, Solarized Dark)
• Cross-platform SSH auth path improvements (ssh-askpass handling and host-key policy wiring)
• Session UX simplification: auto-connect on tab open, disconnect on tab close
• Tab-state indicators via tab color and state suffix (Connecting, Connected, Disconnected, Failed)
• Right-click tab menu for Disconnect, Reconnect, Theme, and Clear
• Collapsible events panel retained as primary diagnostics surface; inline detail/status banners removed
• Terminal behavior polish: better fixed-width font selection, cursor visibility, backspace handling, and terminal-size negotiation stability

Git:

• Tag: v0-m4-done

Milestone 5 - RDP Fully Working

Status: Completed

Delivered:

• Added RdpSessionBackend and wired protocol selection so RDP no longer routes to unsupported backend
• Pivoted RDP design to embedded-only integration (no external RDP process launches)
• Implemented embedded FreeRDP client thread with connect/disconnect lifecycle and event-loop handling
• Added in-window RdpDisplayWidget rendering surface with frame updates from FreeRDP GDI
• Wired direct keyboard/mouse input from the embedded RDP surface to the backend
• Added RDP connect-time password prompt flow and settings wiring (host/port/user/password, desktop size)
• Added explicit profile Domain support for RDP auth (with DOMAIN\username fallback parsing)
• Updated session tab/context-menu behavior so terminal-only actions are hidden on RDP tabs
• Implemented dynamic in-session RDP resolution renegotiation from viewport resize events
• Enabled minimal FreeRDP client-channel build (drdynvc + disp) and channel loading for runtime resize support
• Added RDP profile-level security mode and performance profile options, wired into FreeRDP connection settings
• Hardened RDP lifecycle handling for disconnect/reconnect/abort flows to avoid false failure states on user-initiated stops
• Expanded RDP error/disconnect diagnostics with richer FreeRDP code mapping and raw disconnect detail events
• Pulled FreeRDP source for integration planning and API review

Git:

• Tag: v0-m5-done

Milestone 6 - VNC Working (initial scope)

Status: Completed (initial scope; see gaps below)

Delivered:

• VncSessionBackend: an original RFB (RFC 6143) client implementation against QTcpSocket -- no permissively licensed VNC client library exists to vendor the way FreeRDP was for RDP (LibVNCClient is GPLv2, gtk-vnc is LGPL but GTK-tied), so this is from-scratch protocol code, threaded like SshSessionBackend (a QObject on its own QThread driven by Qt's own async socket signals) rather than RdpSessionBackend's manual worker-thread/blocking-loop pattern
• Full connect/disconnect/reconnect lifecycle, RFB protocol-version negotiation (3.3/3.7/3.8 handshake differences handled explicitly), VNC Authentication (DES challenge-response, using OpenSSL's classic DES API) and no-auth security types, Raw + CopyRect framebuffer decoding, keyboard (Qt key -> X11 keysym mapping) and mouse/wheel input forwarding
• VncDisplayWidget mirroring RdpDisplayWidget's scale-to-fit rendering and input-forwarding shape
• 41 unit tests (tests/test_vnc_session_backend.cpp): pure-function coverage (DES key prep verified against an independently documented test vector, keysym mapping, socket-error mapping) plus state-machine coverage against a scripted in-process fake RFB server (all three protocol-version handshake shapes, auth success/failure, unsupported security types, pixel-accurate Raw/Hextile/ZRLE/Tight decoding including a ZRLE zlib-stream-persistence test across two separate FramebufferUpdate messages, a Tight stream-reset-flag test, cursor/ clipboard round trips) -- caught and fixed a real re-entrancy bug (abort() synchronously re-firing disconnected() mid- failConnection(), silently overwriting a specific error with a generic one)
• Verified live against a real, independently implemented VNC server (TightVNC on Windows): connect with VNC Authentication, correct framebuffer dimensions and pixel data, clean disconnect, reconnect, live cursor-shape and clipboard-send checks. That particular server consistently chose Raw for actual framebuffer content regardless of which compression encodings were announced, so Hextile/ZRLE/Tight's real-world decode path isn't independently confirmed live -- the unit tests are the primary correctness evidence for those
• Per-tab VNC-only display mode toggle (tab-bar right-click -> Display Mode): Scale to Fit (default, matches RDP's behavior) or Actual Size (Scrollbars) -- renders the remote framebuffer at its native pixel size inside a QScrollArea so text isn't shrunk, at the cost of needing to scroll to see the whole screen. Reuses VncDisplayWidget::renderRect()'s existing scale-to-fit math unchanged: it degenerates to an exact 1:1 mapping once the widget's own bounds are fixed to the remote's size, so no separate rendering path was needed. Persisted across sessions like the terminal theme preference.
• Robustness fix: an unrecognized FramebufferUpdate rectangle encoding used to abort the connection generically; kAnnouncedEncodings is now the single source of truth for what SetEncodings announces and what the rectangle-dispatch switch can decode, with a regression test pinning that every announced encoding has a working case
• Clipboard sync (ServerCutText/ClientCutText, Latin-1 only -- no Unicode extension) in both directions
• Remote cursor shape sync via RFB's Cursor pseudo-encoding, mirroring RdpDisplayWidget's cursor handling in VncDisplayWidget
• Hextile, ZRLE, and Tight compression encodings, in addition to Raw + CopyRect -- meaningfully reduces bandwidth over slower links versus Raw alone; Tight in particular is the encoding most real VNC servers prefer when the client offers it. Pure tile/pixel decode logic (including Tight's three filters -- Copy, Palette, Gradient) lives in src/vnc_pixel_codecs.h/.cpp, kept separate from the wire-sequencing state machine so it's unit-testable without a socket. ZRLE and Tight's Basic mode share the same "persistent zlib stream(s), decompress in-memory, decode synchronously" approach (Tight has 4 independent streams selected per-rectangle, individually reset via the compression-control byte's low 4 bits). Tight's JPEG sub-mode decodes via libjpeg-turbo directly (find_package(JPEG REQUIRED) -> JPEG::JPEG), not QImage's own JPEG plugin, to avoid a packaging-dependent runtime failure mode. ZRLE/Tight link ZLIB::ZLIB (found via a fresh top-level find_package(ZLIB REQUIRED), independent of whether vendored FreeRDP's own internal zlib usage stays enabled)
• 41 unit tests total, 15 of them for Hextile/ZRLE/Tight specifically, including a ZRLE zlib-stream-persistence test across two separate FramebufferUpdate messages and a Tight stream-reset-flag test proving the low 4 control-byte bits actually tear down and reinitialize the targeted stream rather than erroring out on stale state

Known gaps (explicit scope decisions, not oversights -- see issue #3 for follow-up tracking):

• Apple's Screen Sharing authentication (Diffie-Hellman + AES, security type 30) isn't implemented, so this can't yet reach macOS's built-in VNC server -- only standard VNC Authentication (type 2) and no-auth (type 1)
• Tight's Basic compression mode always assumes zlib-compressed payloads; the real protocol permits the server to skip compression for very small (filtered byte count under ~12) payloads, which this decoder doesn't special-case (the exact trigger/wire-signaling for that couldn't be verified with confidence against the RFC text alone). In practice this only affects rare, tiny rectangles -- solid or near-solid tiny areas are virtually always sent as Fill instead -- and fails that one rectangle's decode cleanly (disconnects with a clear error) rather than silently misinterpreting it
• Tight's Gradient filter is implemented from RFC 6143's description but is the least exercised/confirmed of the three filters against a real server in this pass (most real-world Tight traffic uses Copy or Palette)
• No dynamic resize (connects at the server's native resolution; the Scale to Fit/Actual Size toggle changes how that fixed resolution is displayed locally, not what resolution is requested from the guest -- VNC has no equivalent of RDP's MS-RDPEDISP for that)

Milestone 7 - Cross-Platform Protocol Hardening

Status: Completed

Delivered:

• Validated SSH and RDP workflows on Linux, macOS, and Windows 11 (VNC is out of scope while Milestone 6 remains deferred)
• Windows: validated the full docs/BUILDING.md toolchain end-to-end (Git/CMake/Ninja/VS Build Tools with the C++ workload/vcpkg for Qt6-OpenSSL-zlib); documented a VS Build Tools installer gotcha where the actual compiler is a "recommended", not "required", component of the VCTools workload
• Fixed RDP keyboard input misreading punctuation keys on Linux (X11 keycode numbering was being treated as a PC/AT scancode; now uses FreeRDP's authoritative X11-keycode-to-scancode table)
• Added RDP clipboard sync (bidirectional, plain text) and RDP cursor/pointer shape sync (resize handles, text I-beam, etc. instead of a static arrow)
• Fixed Tab/Shift+Tab being intercepted by local UI focus navigation instead of reaching SSH/RDP sessions
• Fixed RDP key auto-repeat being dropped, so holding a key only ever sent a single keystroke to the remote machine
• Windows-specific RDP fixes: a crash on every connect attempt (FreeRDP's signal-handling critical section was never initialized) and a host resolution failure on every connect, including literal IP addresses (Winsock was never initialized via WSAStartup)
• Windows: automatic build-time deployment of Qt's platform/SQL-driver plugins and their runtime DLL dependencies, and marked the executable as a GUI (WIN32) app to remove a stray console window behind the UI
• Windows and macOS: proper native app icon embedding (Windows .rc/.ico resource; macOS .app bundle with .icns), replacing the generic default icon previously shown for the built executable/bundle
• macOS: fixed Edit/New Profile dialog form fields collapsing to sizeHint width due to the platform-default QFormLayout field growth policy

Git:

• Tag: Pending user approval (v0-m7-done)

Milestone 8 - Profile and Session UX Completion

Status: Completed

Delivered:

• Added profile tags field to storage + schema migration and profile editor UX
• Added profile folder_path field + nested folder/subfolder profile view mode
• Added profile tree context actions (New Folder, New Connection) and drag-to-folder profile moves with persistence
• Added Help -> About OrbitHub dialog with third-party library inventory and MIT/Apache-2.0 license links
• Extended profile search to include tags/folder path and added profile sort controls (Name, Protocol, Host)
• Persisted profile list UX preferences (search text, view mode, protocol/tag filters, sort order) across app restarts
• Added protocol-aware profile validation/normalization for SSH/RDP/VNC (repository + dialog)
• Improved profile form protocol UX hints and SSH private-key path validation
• Added session events filtering and tab-context actions (Show/Hide Events, Copy Events, Clear Events)
• Added session diagnostics QoL: severity quick-filter (All/Warnings/Errors) and Export Events action
• Persisted session UI defaults (terminal theme, events panel visibility) for new tabs/windows
• Added profile quick filters (Protocol, Tag) with persistence to speed profile browsing

Validation:

• Local build verification passed (cmake --build build)
• No automated tests are currently configured in CTest

Git:

• Tag: Pending user approval (v0-m8-done)

Milestone 9 - Packaging and Distribution

Status: Completed

Delivered:

• Linux .deb (packaging/linux/build-deb.sh) and Flatpak (packaging/flatpak/build-flatpak.sh) packages, both verified installed and launched with working SSH/RDP
• Renamed the app's reverse-DNS identity from io.orbithub.OrbitHub to org.darksingularity.OrbitHub (desktop file, AppStream metainfo, Flatpak manifest, macOS bundle identifier) to reflect a domain actually owned by the project
• Fixed Linux taskbar/panel pin matching (StartupWMClass) so a pinned launcher merges with its running window instead of creating a duplicate entry
• Replaced the stale, mismatched hand-authored launcher SVG with PNG icons rendered directly from the app's own createOrbitHubAppIcon() at each hicolor theme size
• Windows installer via Inno Setup (packaging/windows/orbithub.iss, packaging/windows/build-installer.ps1), verified installed silently and launched cleanly with no crash events
• macOS .dmg via cmake --install + macdeployqt + hdiutil (packaging/macos/build-dmg.sh), verified installed and launched after fixing:
  • a launch crash caused by macdeployqt invalidating the code signature (fixed with ad hoc re-signing)
  • a missing-library crash caused by the Linux-only $ORIGIN rpath token and vendored dylibs installing outside the .app bundle (fixed with APPLE-specific @executable_path/Contents/Frameworks layout)
  • the dmg showing the generic disk icon instead of the app icon
• README and docs/BUILDING.md Packaging sections documented for all three platforms

Validation:

• All three installers built, installed, and launched successfully with working SSH/RDP sessions
• Code signing is ad hoc only (no purchased Apple Developer ID or Windows code-signing certificate), so macOS Gatekeeper and Windows SmartScreen still show first-run warnings by design

Git:

• Tag: v0-m9-done
• Release: v2026.9.8 (v2026.9.8 tag, installers for Windows/Linux/macOS)
• Release: v2026.9.8.2 — same-day patch fixing RDP TLS certificate verification (was fully disabled) and preparing Flatpak packaging for Flathub submission
• Release: v2026.9.8.3 — same-day patch adding an in-app User Guide and standalone User Guide PDF
• Release: v2026.9.14 — fixes distorted RDP text on HiDPI monitors and reduces RDP resize-related display glitches
• Release: v2026.9.14.2 — same-day patch fixing RDP display corruption (missing/misplaced taskbar) after resizing the session window (the client never resized its own display buffer for channel-driven RDP resizes)
• Release: v2026.9.15 — adds Import/Export for profile lists (File menu)

Milestone 10 - v1.0 Stabilization

Status: Planned

Planned Scope:

• Run final regression and acceptance testing across all protocols
• Resolve release-blocking defects
• Finalize docs and publish v1.0 release notes/checklist