MeshChatX/README.md

Reticulum MeshChatX

A heavily customized and updated fork of Reticulum MeshChat.

This project is seperate from the original Reticulum MeshChat project, and is not affiliated with the original project. It has been completely reworked, but I try to maintain a migrator to auto-migrate from old database to new one.

Major Features

• Full LXST support w/ custom voicemail support (espeak-ng and ffmpeg required).
• Map (w/ MBTiles support for offline)
• Security improvements
• Custom UI/UX
• More Tools
• Built-in page archiving and automatic crawler (no multi-page support yet).
• Block LXMF users and NomadNet Nodes
• Toast system for notifications
• i18n support (En, De, Ru)
• Raw SQLite database backend (replaced Peewee ORM)

TODO

• Tests and proper CI/CD pipeline.
• RNS hot reload fix
• Backup/Import identities, messages and interfaces.
• Offline Reticulum documentation tool
• LXMF Telemtry for map
• Spam filter (based on keywords)
• Multi-identity support.
• TAK tool/integration
• RNS Tunnel - tunnel your regular services over RNS to another MeshchatX user.
• RNS Filesync - P2P file sync

Usage

Check releases for pre-built binaries or appimages.

Building

This project uses Task for build automation. Install Task first, then:

task install   # installs Python deps via Poetry and Node deps via pnpm
task build

You can run task run or task develop (a thin alias) to start the backend + frontend loop locally through poetry run meshchat.

Available Tasks

Task	Description
task install	Install all dependencies (syncs version, installs node modules and python deps)
task node_modules	Install Node.js dependencies only
task python	Install Python dependencies using Poetry only
task sync-version	Sync version numbers across project files
task run	Run the application
task develop	Run the application in development mode (alias for run)
task build	Build the application (frontend and backend)
task build-frontend	Build only the frontend
task clean	Clean build artifacts and dependencies
task wheel	Build Python wheel package (outputs to python-dist/)
task build-appimage	Build Linux AppImage
task build-exe	Build Windows portable executable
task dist	Build distribution (defaults to AppImage)
task electron-legacy	Install legacy Electron version
task build-appimage-legacy	Build Linux AppImage with legacy Electron version
task build-exe-legacy	Build Windows portable executable with legacy Electron version
task build-docker	Build Docker image using buildx
task run-docker	Run Docker container using docker-compose

All tasks support environment variable overrides. For example:

• PYTHON=python3.12 task install
• DOCKER_PLATFORMS=linux/amd64,linux/arm64 task build-docker

Python Packaging

The backend uses Poetry with pyproject.toml for dependency management and packaging. Before building, run python3 scripts/sync_version.py (or task sync-version) to ensure the generated src/version.py reflects the version from package.json that the Electron artifacts use. This keeps the CLI release metadata, wheel packages, and other bundles aligned.

Build Artifact Locations

Both poetry build and python -m build generate wheels inside the default dist/ directory. The task wheel shortcut wraps poetry build -f wheel and then runs python scripts/move_wheels.py to relocate the generated .whl files into python-dist/ (the layout expected by scripts/test_wheel.sh and the release automation). Use task wheel if you need the artifacts in python-dist/; poetry build or python -m build alone will leave them in dist/.

Building with Poetry

# Install dependencies
poetry install

# Build the package (wheels land in dist/)
poetry build

# Install locally for testing (consumes dist/)
pip install dist/*.whl

Building with pip (alternative)

If you prefer pip, you can build/install directly:

# Build the wheel
pip install build
python -m build

# Install locally
pip install .

Building in Docker

task build-docker

build-docker creates reticulum-meshchatx:local (or $DOCKER_IMAGE if you override it) via docker buildx. Set DOCKER_PLATFORMS to linux/amd64,linux/arm64 when you need multi-arch images, and adjust DOCKER_BUILD_FLAGS/DOCKER_BUILD_ARGS to control --load/--push.

Running with Docker Compose

task run-docker

run-docker feeds the locally-built image into docker compose -f docker-compose.yml up --remove-orphans --pull never reticulum-meshchatx. The compose file uses the MESHCHAT_IMAGE env var so you can override the target image without editing the YAML (the default still points at ghcr.io/sudo-ivan/reticulum-meshchatx:latest). Use docker compose down or Ctrl+C to stop the container.

The Electron build artifacts will still live under dist/ for releases.

Standalone Executables (cx_Freeze)

The cx_setup.py script uses cx_Freeze for creating standalone executables (AppImage for Linux, NSIS for Windows). This is separate from the Poetry/pip packaging workflow.

Internationalization (i18n)

Multi-language support is in progress. We use vue-i18n for the frontend.

Translation files are located in meshchatx/src/frontend/locales/.

Currently supported languages:

• English (Primary)
• Russian
• German