D-LAN

D-LAN is open source, decentralized LAN file sharing software.

Easily share files and folders on a local area network, such as at a LAN party. After launching D-LAN, you automatically discover other users and their shared files without special configuration or a central server.

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Features

• Share files and folders in a local area network environment (LAN).
• Distributed transfers to increase performance and reliability.
• Very easy to use: no configuration, no central server.
• Fast indexed search among all other peers.
• Browse all files and folders of any other peer.
• Manage the download queue. It includes adding, deleting, pausing or reordering.
• Persistent global chat with channels, formatting, and emoticons.
• D-LAN can run without a graphical user interface (GUI) and be controlled remotely.
• Open source. Source code distributed under the GPLv3 license.
• Free of ads and malware.

Development

The code is in application: Core handles sharing and transfers, GUI provides the Qt interface, and Common contains shared infrastructure. CMake builds the core, GUI, tools and tests.

Prerequisites

• CMake 3.21 or newer, Ninja, and a C++20 compiler compatible with your Qt installation. Use LLVM-MinGW on Windows, Xcode Command Line Tools on macOS, or GCC/Clang on Linux.
• Qt 6 with Core, Network, Xml, Sql, Widgets, SvgWidgets, and Test. Install LinguistTools and Qt 6.7 or newer to build translations.
• OpenSSL 3.2 or newer development libraries for automatic remote-control certificate generation and the Argon2id derivation of the remote-control password, and a Qt TLS backend at runtime. Set OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR when OpenSSL is outside the usual search paths.
• On Linux: Qt DBus and the matching Qt Core/Gui private headers (commonly packaged as qt6-base-private-dev), plus dbus-run-session for file-manager integration tests. Build against the Qt version used at runtime.
• macOS packages target macOS 26.0 or newer on Apple Silicon (arm64); build dependencies for macOS 26.0 or earlier.
• BLAKE3's C library and Protobuf with a matching protoc compiler. If Protobuf has no CMake package configuration, install pkg-config and its .pc file.

Use dependencies built for the same compiler and architecture. CMake locates them; it does not download or build them. See dependency build instructions if you need to build BLAKE3 or Protobuf yourself.

Configure and build

From the repository root, replace the dependency paths with your installations:

cmake -S application -B application/build/debug -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="/path/to/Qt" -DDLAN_BLAKE3_ROOT="/path/to/blake3/c" -DDLAN_PROTOBUF_ROOT="/path/to/protobuf"
cmake --build application/build/debug --parallel
ctest --test-dir application/build/debug --output-on-failure

Put the compiler, CMake, Ninja and protoc on PATH. DLAN_BLAKE3_ROOT must contain blake3.h and lib/; DLAN_PROTOBUF_ROOT points to the Protobuf installation. Executables are written to application/build/debug/output.

Alternatively, open application/CMakeLists.txt in Qt Creator, select a kit matching your compiler and Qt installation, and set the same dependency paths in its CMake configuration.

Tests and tools are enabled by default. Set DLAN_BUILD_TESTS=OFF or DLAN_BUILD_TOOLS=OFF to omit them. Use Release instead of Debug for an optimized build.

Further documentation

See the development reference for macOS release testing, release packaging (Windows installer, macOS app and Linux AppImage), profiling, platform-specific behavior, storage locations, and crash reports and stack traces.