Put a window on screen while it starts, and refuse the second one

Two things a desktop application is expected to do and this one did not.

◆ THREE SECONDS OF NOTHING.

Measured on a debug build against a cold profile: the main window arrives 3.1
seconds after the executable does. Nothing was on screen for any of it — the icon
had been double-clicked and the desktop looked unchanged.

The main window cannot come sooner. It needs a view model, and the view model needs
composition to have opened the SQLite cache, bound the terminal's loopback socket,
asked the platform about a TPM and read the install layout off disk. Its own
IsStarting card already narrates what happens after it appears; this is the part
before, which no arrangement of that window can cover.

So SplashWindow, and it is measurably the point: 668 ms to the splash, 3.1 s to the
window that replaces it.

Two mechanics are load-bearing rather than incidental.

The splash *is* desktop.MainWindow for a moment. The lifetime shows whatever that
property holds once OnFrameworkInitializationCompleted returns; a window merely
Show()n there would have no lifetime attached, and under
ShutdownMode.OnLastWindowClose the first close of anything would end the process.
Handing the property over is one assignment and Avalonia reads it lazily.

And composition is posted at DispatcherPriority.Background rather than called. It
is synchronous and slow — which is the entire argument for a splash — so running it
inline would block the very dispatcher turn that has to paint the thing.

The window is SizeToContent="Height", which is about the failure and not the
splash: CouldNotStart carries an exception's own message, and inside a fixed height
a long one would wrap and be clipped at exactly the moment that text is all the
window is for. A composition that throws is caught rather than left to the
dispatcher, for the same reason — before this there was nothing on screen to
abandon, and now there is, so an escaping exception would leave a window saying
"Starting…" over a process that had stopped. Escape closes it, and only then.

◆ AND ONE INSTANCE.

Claimed in Main before Avalonia is configured, so a second launch starts nothing at
all: no toolkit, no window, no splash flashing up before it thinks better of it.

Exclusion is an exclusive handle on instance.lock inside the profile directory, and
that location settles two questions at once. A nightly and a release build do not
exclude each other — separate profiles, ADR 0013 — and two people signed in to one
machine each get their own instance. A global mutex would have had to re-derive
both from somewhere.

A file handle rather than a named mutex because the kernel releases it however the
process ends. There is no such thing as a stale lock here, which is a state a
named mutex makes both platforms model differently and neither model simply.

The second launch is not silent. Somebody who double-clicks an icon and sees
nothing has been told the application is broken, so it rings a named pipe — named
from a digest of the profile path, so it is scoped exactly as the lock is — and the
running instance un-minimises and activates. Activate is a request and not a
guarantee: Windows refuses the foreground to a process that did not receive the
input, and the flashing taskbar button that results is still an answer.

Three seconds of retrying when the lock is held by something that does not answer
its pipe, and that window has one job. Velopack's apply ends this process and its
updater starts the new build; the two are ordered, but a lock held a moment too
long would make the successor refuse itself and vanish — an update that looked like
an uninstall. The doorbell is disposed before Shutdown for the same reason, so the
pipe name is free before the process is.

◆ VERIFIED BY RUNNING IT, WHICH IS THE ONLY WAY EITHER OF THESE COULD BE.

Two launches of the built executable: the first stayed up with instance.lock in the
profile, the second exited. Window sizes over time are where the two timings above
come from — 420x160 then 1196x776.

SingleInstanceTests covers what a single process can reach: the lock, its release
by disposal, the doorbell answering more than once, and two profiles not excluding
each other. SplashCardTests measures the one thing the splash can get wrong, which
is a failure message long enough to need the height the window is willing to give
it. Checks 1.12 and 16.11 are what needs a second executable and a real screen.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

src/DodoSSH.Client.App/App.axaml.cs

@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ using Avalonia.Controls;
 using Avalonia.Controls.ApplicationLifetimes;
 using Avalonia.Input.Platform;
 using Avalonia.Markup.Xaml;
+using Avalonia.Threading;
 using DodoSSH.Client.App.Platform;
 using DodoSSH.Client.App.Views;
 using DodoSSH.Client.Auth;
@@ -33,12 +34,77 @@ internal sealed partial class DodoSshApp : Application
     {
         if (ApplicationLifetime is IClassicDesktopStyleApplicationLifetime desktop)
         {
-            Compose(desktop);
+            ShowSomethingWhileComposing(desktop);
         }
 
         base.OnFrameworkInitializationCompleted();
     }
 
+    /// <summary>
+    /// Puts a window on screen first, and composes the application behind it.
+    /// </summary>
+    /// <remarks>
+    /// <para>
+    /// <b>The splash <em>is</em> the main window for a moment, which is what makes this work at all.</b> The
+    /// desktop lifetime shows whatever <c>MainWindow</c> holds once this method returns and then runs the
+    /// message loop; a window created here and merely shown would be a window with no lifetime attached, and
+    /// with <c>ShutdownMode.OnLastWindowClose</c> the first close of anything would end the process. Handing
+    /// the property over is one assignment, and Avalonia reads it lazily.
+    /// </para>
+    /// <para>
+    /// <b>And composition is posted rather than called.</b> It is synchronous and takes long enough to be
+    /// worth a splash in the first place — which is the whole argument for this method — so running it here
+    /// would block the very dispatcher turn that has to paint the thing. Background priority puts it behind
+    /// rendering, which is what makes this a painted window rather than merely a shown one.
+    /// </para>
+    /// </remarks>
+    private static void ShowSomethingWhileComposing(IClassicDesktopStyleApplicationLifetime desktop)
+    {
+        var splash = new SplashWindow();
+
+        desktop.MainWindow = splash;
+
+        // Fully qualified, and it has to be: Application inherits an instance Dispatcher property from
+        // AvaloniaObject, member lookup beats the namespace, and a static method here cannot reach an
+        // instance property — so the unqualified name is a compile error rather than the type. Same below.
+        Avalonia.Threading.Dispatcher.UIThread.Post(
+            () => ComposeBehind(desktop, splash),
+            DispatcherPriority.Background);
+    }
+
+    /// <remarks>
+    /// <para>
+    /// The order at the end is not interchangeable. <c>ShutdownMode</c> is <c>OnLastWindowClose</c>, so the
+    /// real window is shown while the splash is still open and the splash is closed afterwards; closing the
+    /// only window there is would end the process instead of handing it over.
+    /// </para>
+    /// <para>
+    /// <b>A failure is caught rather than left to the dispatcher, and the splash is exactly why.</b> Before
+    /// this method existed a composition that threw took the process with it and left nothing behind. Now
+    /// there is something to leave behind — so an exception escaping a posted callback would abandon a window
+    /// saying "Starting…" over a process that had stopped, which is worse than the crash it replaced. What
+    /// arrives instead is the sentence and a way to close it.
+    /// </para>
+    /// </remarks>
+    private static void ComposeBehind(
+        IClassicDesktopStyleApplicationLifetime desktop,
+        SplashWindow splash)
+    {
+        try
+        {
+            Compose(desktop);
+        }
+        catch (Exception exception) when (exception is not OutOfMemoryException)
+        {
+            splash.CouldNotStart(exception.Message);
+
+            return;
+        }
+
+        desktop.MainWindow?.Show();
+        splash.Close();
+    }
+
     /// <remarks>
     /// <para>
     /// Composed by hand rather than through a container. The graph is a handful of objects deep and an
@@ -137,12 +203,44 @@ internal sealed partial class DodoSshApp : Application
 
         desktop.MainWindow = new MainWindow { DataContext = viewModel };
 
+        // The other half of Program's claim on this profile: a second launch was refused, and this is what
+        // answers it. Posted onto the UI thread because a pipe accept completes on a thread pool thread and
+        // a window may only be touched from the thread that owns it — see SingleInstance.Listen.
+        var others = SingleInstance.Listen(
+            paths,
+            () => Avalonia.Threading.Dispatcher.UIThread.Post(() => BringToFront(desktop.MainWindow)));
+
         // Started rather than awaited: the framework's initialisation must not block on a schema
         // migration. The view model shows its own progress and handles its own failures, which is why
         // discarding the task here is safe rather than merely convenient.
         _ = viewModel.StartAsync(CancellationToken.None);
 
-        WireShutdown(desktop, viewModel, workspace, caches);
+        WireShutdown(desktop, viewModel, workspace, caches, others);
+    }
+
+    /// <summary>
+    /// Raises the window somebody has just asked for by launching the application again.
+    /// </summary>
+    /// <remarks>
+    /// Un-minimised first, because activating a minimised window leaves it minimised and the launch would
+    /// look ignored. <c>Activate</c> is a request rather than a guarantee — Windows refuses the foreground to
+    /// a process that did not receive the input, and what happens then is a flashing taskbar button, which is
+    /// still an answer. That is the platform's own rule about focus stealing and not a thing to work around.
+    /// </remarks>
+    private static void BringToFront(Window? window)
+    {
+        if (window is null)
+        {
+            return;
+        }
+
+        if (window.WindowState is WindowState.Minimized)
+        {
+            window.WindowState = WindowState.Normal;
+        }
+
+        window.Show();
+        window.Activate();
     }
 
     /// <summary>Composes the shell itself, with everything this platform answers for it.</summary>
@@ -271,7 +369,8 @@ internal sealed partial class DodoSshApp : Application
         IClassicDesktopStyleApplicationLifetime desktop,
         MainWindowViewModel viewModel,
         TerminalWorkspace workspace,
-        ClientCacheFactory caches)
+        ClientCacheFactory caches,
+        IAsyncDisposable others)
     {
         var shuttingDown = false;
 
@@ -290,6 +389,11 @@ internal sealed partial class DodoSshApp : Application
             await viewModel.DisposeAsync().ConfigureAwait(true);
             await workspace.DisposeAsync().ConfigureAwait(true);
 
+            // Awaited rather than dropped, so the pipe name is free before this process is. It matters for
+            // one caller and matters a lot there: an update relaunches this application, and a successor
+            // that found the name still taken would be a second instance refusing itself.
+            await others.DisposeAsync().ConfigureAwait(true);
+
             caches.Dispose();
 
             desktop.Shutdown();