CNA-BUG-162: The phone notification channel and sender never initialise Winsock or link ws2_32, so on Windows they work only if something else did

CNA snapshot 3b43bd86  ·  Known Issues › Current bugs  ·  source links pinned to 3b43bd86

modules/phone calls no WSAStartup and its library names no Winsock import library, so on Windows Open and SendAsync work only after another component initialised Winsock. Its INVALID_SOCKET checks were fixed on 2026-10-22.

Identifier

CNA-BUG-162

Category

Bug

Subsystem

Networking & gamer services

Status

Narrowed (partially fixed; describes only what survives)

Verified against

CNA 3b43bd86 (3b43bd8687ed46523d873f9bec4b32bd8481dcb5)

Severity

Medium (a triage suggestion, not a project priority)

Evidence basis

Inferred (strong): follows from the code, but the behaviour was not run

Tests touching this area

None

Affected contract

HttpNotificationChannel::Open() and RawPushNotificationMessage / ToastPushNotificationMessage::SendAsync on Windows

Expected behaviour

CNA builds the notification path for Windows on purpose: cmake/UnitTests.cmake (WINNATIVE-0014) says “The channel ITSELF is built on Windows ... this excludes the test's POSIX listener, not the feature”, and CNA's native-Windows plan records two compile fixes in these files. Winsock requires WSAStartup before socket or getaddrinfo; CNA's own Inspector socket layer calls it for exactly that reason.

Actual behaviour at TARGET

No file under modules/phone calls WSAStartup; among CNA's own sources only the Inspector's InternalSocket.cpp does (besides the vendored ENet's initialisation). In a process where neither ran, socket() fails with WSANOTINITIALISED: Open queues a ChannelOpenFailed error, logs that it could not create a listening socket and returns with no URI, and SendAsync fails at getaddrinfo and returns false. modules/phone/CMakeLists.txt links cna_phone to no ws2_32; the only phone target that names it is the MinGW build of the lifecycle test, which also calls WSAStartup itself.

Source locations

• modules/phone/src/HttpNotificationChannel.cpp — Open and Listen (InvalidNativeSocket checks); no WSAStartup
• modules/phone/src/PushNotificationSender.cpp — Post (getaddrinfo, socket check); no WSAStartup
• modules/phone/CMakeLists.txt — cna_phone links no Winsock import library
• modules/inspector/src/InternalSocket.cpp — the one WSAStartup among CNA library sources, for comparison
• cmake/UnitTests.cmake — WINNATIVE-0014 exclusion of HttpNotificationChannelTests.cpp under WIN32; CnaNotificationLifecycleTests links ws2_32 only for MinGW
• tools/phone/notification_lifecycle_test.cpp — calls WSAStartup itself before opening a channel

Evidence

Checked by reading the two phone sources, the module's CMake file and cmake/UnitTests.cmake at 3b43bd86, and by searching CNA's sources and CMake files for WSAStartup and ws2_32. Not executed: no Windows host was used. The start-up failure rests on Winsock's documented initialisation rule. Whether an executable that links CNA::Phone without the Inspector or ENet links at all on Windows was not established.

Narrowed at c6dec91f: 20fe6efd2 (MUSEUM-PHONE-001, 2026-10-22) replaced the < 0 comparisons in Open and Listen with a check against static_cast<socket_t>(-1), which equals INVALID_SOCKET, and Post in PushNotificationSender.cpp uses the same check, so a failed socket or accept is now detected. The missing initialisation and import library are unchanged.

Focused reproduction

No focused reproduction is known. Nothing has been invented here; the evidence above is what exists.

Current tests

HttpNotificationChannelTests.cpp, which holds both the channel and the sender suites, is still removed from the test sources under WIN32 because its test client uses POSIX socket headers. notification_lifecycle_test.cpp is also built for 64-bit MinGW, but it calls WSAStartup before opening a channel, so no test exercises a process that has not initialised Winsock.

Regression test

A Windows test that opens a channel in a process that has not initialised Winsock and posts to it. The fix is a reference-counted WSAStartup/WSACleanup inside the module, as InternalSocket.cpp does, with an explicit ws2_32 link on cna_phone.

Blast radius

Windows builds (native, and MinGW under Wine) of phone ports that use push notifications. PhoneApplicationService and POSIX hosts are unaffected. A process that already initialised Winsock (CNA networking started, the Inspector enabled, or host code) avoids the failure.

Workaround

Call WSAStartup(MAKEWORD(2, 2), &data) in the host before opening a channel or sending, and link ws2_32 explicitly.