RD Pipe is a Windows-only library that bridges Remote Desktop Services Dynamic Virtual Channels (DVCs) to named pipes.
Data written to the named pipe is sent over the virtual channel to the server, and data received from the server can be read from the named pipe.
RDP/Citrix client ── COM (IWTSPlugin) ── rd_pipe.dll ── named pipe ── your app (Python/C#/…)
Microsoft exposes two sets of APIs for Dynamic Virtual Channels. The server APIs are easy to implement, as they are based on file I/O. The client APIs are much less trivial, since they require implementing a COM server — significant overhead in languages that don't compile to native code.
RD Pipe implements the COM server, exposing a named pipe that can be consumed easily from C#, Python, and similar languages.
For each opened channel, RD Pipe creates a per-session pipe:
\\.\pipe\RdPipe\<session-id>\<channel-name>
The pipe ACL is built from the caller's logon SID, so only the interactive user owning the session can connect.
Requires the MSVC Rust toolchain on Windows. Cross-platform builds are not supported.
cargo build
cargo build --release --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
cargo test
CI targets: i686, x86_64, aarch64, arm64ec (all *-pc-windows-msvc). Citrix registration is x86-only.
CLSID: {D1F74DC7-9FDE-45BE-9251-FA72D4064DA3}.
Register via regsvr32 calling DllInstall. The first argument is a flag string; remaining arguments are channel names.
regsvr32 /i:"cr ChannelOne ChannelTwo" rd_pipe.dll
Flags:
| Flag | Effect |
|---|---|
c |
Register COM in-proc server (requires channel names) |
r |
Register as RDP/MSTS add-in |
x |
Register as Citrix module (x86 only) |
m |
Write to HKLM instead of HKCU |
Uninstall:
regsvr32 /u /i:"crm" rd_pipe.dll
Log level is read from LogLevel (REG_DWORD, 1–5) under the CLSID key in HKCU (fallback HKLM), mapped to tracing levels. Output is written to %TEMP%\RdPipe.log.
AGPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.