Building & Release

A release build bundles the Tauri UI inside the C++ executable so the user only needs to run a single file. The build order matters — the UI must be built first so the executable exists before CMake tries to embed it.

1. Build the UI

bun run tauri build

This produces a release build of the Tauri frontend at:

src-tauri/target/release/ui.exe

2. Build the C++ Backend

Select the x64-release-with-ui preset in VS Code or Visual Studio and build. CMake will pick up the ui.exe from the path above and embed it as a resource inside the C++ executable.

If you try to build with this preset before the UI has been built, CMake will fail with:

FATAL_ERROR: UI_RESOURCE_PATH does not exist

3. Grab the Output

The final executable will be at:

src-cheat/out/x64-release-with-ui/bin/web-overlay.exe

This is the only file you need to distribute. When launched it will extract the UI to the temp directory and start it automatically.