Windows 7 compatible builds of AWL?

[Darthagnon]

GoLang v1.21.4 is the last to work on Win7 (and by extension, Win8/8.1/older Win10/newer Win10/Win11).

As awl is built with GoLang v1.24 as of v0.12 (and GoLang v1.22 before that), it will only run on Win10 and up. There is a fork of GoLang that supports legacy operating systems https://github.com/thongtech/go-legacy-win7 - would it be possible to release legacy builds for older Windows, too?

[Darthagnon]

I'm trying to do a custom build with the aforementioned legacy Win7 GoLang, but I keep getting the error on build: application.go:45:12: pattern static: no matching files found

EDIT: Looks like I need to use Flutter v3.19 (last Win7 compatible version) to build the static webui

See also: https://dev.to/rustdesk/how-to-make-flutter-324-run-on-windows-7-4ocf; here's how Rustdesk implements Windows 7 compatibility in their Flutter v3.24.5: https://github.com/rustdesk/engine/blob/main/.github/workflows/flutter-engine-windows-x64-release-build.yml

[Darthagnon]

I've successfully manually built awl myself, and it should be compatible with Windows 7:

1. Refer to https://github.com/anywherelan/awl/blob/master/build.sh
2. Download Go for Windows 7 and extract it to C:\dev\go-legacy-win7
3. Download Flutter v3.24.5 and the release ZIP of the patch by Rustdesk. Extract it to C:\dev\flutter and overwrite the contents of C:\dev\flutter\bin\cache\artifacts\engine\windows-x64\ with the patched files.
4. Download the latest master (8988360 / untagged v0.12.0 / 20250322) of the AWL webUI source code and cd into it.
5. Setup the environment:

set GOROOT_BOOTSTRAP=c:\dev\

<!-- Failed to upload "Win7 build.zip" -->

go-legacy-win7\
set GOROOT=c:\dev\go-legacy-win7\
set GOTOOLCHAIN=local
set CGO_ENABLED=0
set GOARCH=amd64
set "PATH=%PATH%;c:\dev\go-legacy-win7\bin\;c:\dev\flutter\bin\

6. Run flutter build web --release; it will complain about dependencies - edit pubspect.yaml and downgrade as little as possible and as necessary, e.g. build_runner: ^2.4.13 and json_serializable: ^6.9.0 (if the build doesn't look like it's doing anything, press Ctrl+C and skip past the Google license nonsense). You have now built the webUI (why do static webUIs need building? Web languages are interpreted, this is stupid).
7. Download the latest tag of the AWL core (v0.12.0) source code.
8. Copy the contents of awl-flutter-master\build\web\ to a new folder awl-0.12.0\static\
9. Copy wintun.dll to awl-0.12.0\embeds\ (get it from either the DLL extracted from a release EXE or https://www.wintun.net/builds/wintun-0.14.1.zip)
10. Run cd awl-0.12.0\cmd\awl-tray\
11. Run go build -o bin\awl-tray-win7.exe

What should work

amd64 builds launch and connect (NB. run as Administrator, as awl does not auto-elevate). This should work on Win7/8/8.1/older Win10/newer Win10/Win11. Official builds currently only work on older Win10 and up.

The above build process should also work on Win7. The Flutter build step is the only part I'm not 100% sure does.

My dev machine runs Win10 v1709. Binaries and prebuilt webUI attached.

What does not work:

x86 build gives the following error:

-----------------------------
Anywherelan error
---------------------------
failed to start server: failed to init vpn: failed to create TUN device: do as system: create tun: Error creating interface: Error loading wintun.dll DLL: Unable to load library: %1 is not a valid Win32 application.
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

x64 build, DNS does not seem to work. Direct access via IP addresses does work, though.

[Darthagnon]

Build

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zReayaZARAc9KMu39QY_RLYzcV7ZInnk/view?usp=drive_link

Password: bythesewordsoursecretskeep

[Darthagnon]

Please note that the build process as documented above needs an internet connection (and assumes that the package maintainers do not nuke their work) to download GoLang and Flutter dependency packages; I need to figure out how to cache these dependencies for an offline reproducible build.

[Darthagnon]

Upon further testing, I think the DNS issue might just be my PC. It seems to work fine on another PC.

[pymq]

Hi @Darthagnon!

Nice work. I didn't plan on supporting Windows 7 because it adds a lot of complexity to maintenance.
However, it would be a nice addition to the project if you'd like to contribute a fully automated process of building awl for Windows 7 in GitHub Actions (something like this, in a separate job that downloads pre-built flutter web statics).

Do I understand correctly that it's possible to build for Windows 7 using go-legacy-win7 compiler, but building on a Windows 10 machine? That would simplify things quite a bit.

x86 build gives the following error:
Unable to load library: %1 is not a valid Win32 application.

Did you use the correct arch from the wintun.zip?

[Darthagnon]

I was thinking, I probably used the 64bit wintun DLL for 32bit. I built on a Win10 1709 machine, but the build process (if I read Rustdesk's comments correctly regarding Flutter) should work on Windows 7 hosts, too. The end binary I have tested as working on Win7, Win10 1709, Win11 24H2.

I have a nutty idea of trying to build for WinXP https://github.com/BieHDC/go-backports

[Darthagnon]

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oEcnFeid0XfA0vVDEqRC-1iI674s7pDu?usp=sharing

I did some more builds, x86 now seems to work, used 32bit Wintun

[Darthagnon]

I have uploaded some more builds and checksums, no changes, just Linux builds. Same link above.

Did some brief testing at work today on an old Win7 laptop, had some errors about "Split DNS unsupported on this Windows version". Not sure what that was about, but direct IP access seems to work. xxx.awl DNS didn't seem to work. It would be nice if IP addresses and hostnames were clickable links to open them in new tabs (or copy to clipboard).

[Darthagnon]

As I have not yet figured out how to set up a Github CI to automatically build for Win7, here are updated manual builds of v0.13 for Win7 and Linux:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1n2x1JMSWlL9U0Wz8UswO98aIcdJ5OBGE?usp=sharing

I couldn't get the Mac version to build due to Fyne errors and have not yet tried to build the server component.