go_kite

A desktop Bluesky client written in Go using go-gui.

This repo ports the original V-based Kite app to the new Go GUI framework with feature parity: login, session reuse, timeline polling, links, quoted posts, images, and keyboard font-size shortcuts.

Features

• Login with Bluesky credentials
• Session persistence in ~/.kite.toml
• Automatic timeline refresh loop
• Retry + session refresh fallback on API failures
• Quoted post rendering
• Clickable links (opened via native platform handlers)
• Optional image loading with local cache
• Font size controls: Alt+Up and Alt+Down
• Right-click timeline to jump to top

Run

go mod tidy
go run .

Disable image downloads/rendering:

go run . -no-images

Test

Run the full local validation gate before pushing a branch:

make prepush

make prepush approximates this repo's CI from one host: race-enabled tests, go vet, lint, and a build. It aborts on the first failing target. Individual targets (make test, test-race, vet, lint, build) are available for a tighter loop while iterating.

Gate targets run with GOWORK=off so they resolve the versions in go.mod, which is what CI does — a local go.work pointing at a sibling checkout would otherwise validate something CI never sees. The app build targets (make all) keep using the workspace.

CI-only validation

make prepush covers one host. CI additionally runs the whole suite on both ubuntu-latest and macos-latest, so a platform-specific failure on the OS you are not using can only be caught there.

Icons

assets/logo.svg is the artwork. Everything shipped is rendered from the two derived masters beside it:

make icons

That regenerates assets/icon/kite.icns (macOS bundle), assets/icon/kite.ico plus rsrc_windows_*.syso (Windows executable resource), and assets/icons/hicolor/** (Linux). The outputs are committed, so a build never needs the rendering tools; make icons needs rsvg-convert, ImageMagick and iconutil.

The icon is wired in two independent places and both are required — the .icns covers Finder and the Dock tile of a bundled build, while gui.WindowCfg.IconPNG covers the running process and is the only icon that exists under go run .. See assets/icon/README.md for why, and for the Linux install paths.

Packaging

make dist                     # every package this host can build, into dist/
make dist VERSION=1.2.0       # stamp a real version instead of `git describe`
make dist-linux ARCHES=amd64  # one architecture instead of amd64 + arm64
make dist-macos               # .dmg only (macOS host)

Target	Produces
dist-macos	Kite-<ver>-macos-<arch>.dmg
dist-linux	go-kite-<ver>-linux-<arch>.tar.gz, go-kite_<ver>_<arch>.deb
dist-windows	go-kite-<ver>-windows-<arch>.zip

Linux and Windows cross-build from any host with no cross toolchain, because go-gui's gl backend is CGo-free on both — it dlopens libEGL/opengl32 through purego, and go-glyph supplies a pure-Go text pipeline when cgo is off. CGO_ENABLED=0 is forced even for a native Linux build, so the binary links no glibc and runs on any distro; the only runtime dependency is libEGL.so.1 (libegl1), which is what the .deb declares.

macOS is the exception. Its backend is Objective-C behind cgo, so dist-macos runs only on macOS and only for the host architecture. The .dmg is built from Kite.app, which make all produces, and carries whatever signature SIGN_IDENTITY gave it — see the Makefile. Nothing here notarizes, so a downloaded .dmg still hits Gatekeeper on another Mac.

The .deb is assembled directly from ar plus two tarballs rather than by dpkg-deb, which is what lets a macOS host build Debian packages at all. The tarball is the fallback for everything else: unpack it and run its install.sh (PREFIX defaults to ~/.local).

Release builds always pin to go.mod, never to a go.work pointing at sibling checkouts. dist/ is gitignored; dist/SHA256SUMS covers every artifact and is rewritten on each run.

Project Layout

• main.go - app entry point and window lifecycle
• views.go - login and timeline UI views
• timeline.go - timeline loop, post conversion, image cache/download logic
• api.go - Bluesky API client
• session.go - session load/save/refresh
• textutil.go - formatting, sanitization, and shared helpers
• models.go - app, timeline, and API data models
• icon.go - the embedded window/Dock icon, and why it is not the .icns
• packaging/package.sh - builds the macOS, Linux and Windows packages

Notes

• Session file path is intentionally compatible with the original app: ~/.kite.toml.
• Cached/resized timeline images are stored under your temp directory at .../kite.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.