meshvpn/client/docs/windows_deploy.md

Windows Deployment Guide (.exe)

To ensure the client is a lightweight .exe that consumes less than 256MB of RAM, follow these build instructions.

🛠 Build Process

1. Environment Setup:

   • Install Rust.
   • Install LLVM (required for some networking crates).

2. Optimization Flags: To keep the binary small and memory usage low, use the following Cargo.toml profile:

   [profile.release]
   opt-level = 'z'     # Optimize for size
   lto = true          # Link Time Optimization
   codegen-units = 1   # Maximize optimization
   panic = 'abort'     # Remove stack unwinding (saves space/RAM)
   strip = true        # Remove symbols from the binary
   

3. Building the .exe:

   cargo build --release
   

   The resulting executable will be in target/release/meshvpn-client.exe.

📦 Resource Constraints (< 256MB RAM)

To guarantee low memory usage:

• Asynchronous Runtime: Using tokio with the current_thread scheduler instead of multi_thread to reduce thread overhead.
• Zero-Copy: Using bytes crate for packet handling to avoid unnecessary memory allocations.
• No GUI: By keeping it a CLI tool, we avoid the massive overhead of Electron or similar frameworks.

🚦 Administrator Requirements

The .exe must be run as Administrator to:

1. Load the wintun.dll.
2. Create the virtual network adapter.
3. Set routing table entries.