Spectralis devlog #10
—Hello again proggers—
11 hours, zero sleep, and somewhere in the middle of that a full release went out. v5.4.1, then v5.4.1.2 right behind it because apparently one patch release wasn’t enough punishment for one night.
sleep is a scheduling conflict I lost
Cat or dog? winmm.dll
Okay let’s get into it~
—Yap—
Started as a normal patch pass and turned into a full Linux compatibility audit at 3am, because it turns out shipping something cross-platform means actually checking what “cross-platform” was quietly lying about. Found four separate ways the app was secretly Windows-only, fixed all of them, shipped twice.
—The Great Suffering—
1 — winmm.dll Doesn’t Exist On Linux, Who Knew
Something was calling into winmm.dll directly. Which is a Windows multimedia API. Which does not exist on Linux. Genuinely did not know this was happening until it broke loudly.
“who knew” is doing a lot of work in that commit message
2 — Shipped A .exe To Linux, My Bad
Somewhere in the build/packaging step, a .exe was ending up in the Linux build. An executable format Linux does not run. Not a subtle bug, just an embarrassing one.
3 — Song Wars Closing = Surprise Alt+F4
Closing Song Wars was apparently also closing the entire app, unprompted, no warning. A feature window doubling as a kill switch is not a feature, it’s a trap.
4 — Yeeted yt-dlp + ffmpeg Into Linux Land, Zero Installs Needed
The actual fix underneath most of this: bundled yt-dlp and ffmpeg directly for Linux instead of assuming they’d already be installed system-wide, which they very often weren’t. Zero external installs needed now, it just works out of the box.
5 — Last Page Isn’t A Dead End Anymore
Merged in from feature/story-pager-finish — reaching the last page of a story used to just… stop. Dead end, nothing to do. Fixed so it actually resolves properly instead of leaving you stranded on the final page.
6 — Two Releases In One Night
v5.4.1 went out, then a second pass turned up enough left over that v5.4.1.2 followed right after. Both merged through staging same night, same sleepless stretch.
—FAQ (no one asked these but they are here)—
Q: What is a “progger”?
A: A human programmer. You. The one who found out about winmm.dll at 3am.
Q: Was Spectralis actually broken on Linux before this?
A: In at least four distinct ways, yes. Missing binaries, a stray .exe, a Windows-only DLL call, and an app-closing bug. Now fixed.
Q: Why two patch releases instead of one?
A: v5.4.1 went out, more got found immediately after, and waiting felt worse than just shipping v5.4.1.2 same night.
Q: Did you actually not sleep?
A: Correct. Not recommending it. Doing it anyway next time, probably.
Q: Is Linux actually solid now?
A: As solid as one very long, very tired night of testing can confirm. Time will tell the rest.
—This is the end*—
*end for now, sleep schedules permitting
PIBBLE!!!