5 ms·

I feel like a dinosaur because a "native" app to me means pretty much the exact opposite of an electron app.

soapdog 6y ago
I totally agree with you there, buuut, before this release VSCode on a Surface Pro X would be Electron running as a ia32 emulated app, which is not only web technologies but also the wrong ISA. I'd love to have sublime text, textadept, or any other real native editor running under ARM64 on Windows but so far they are not available. This VSCode is the first editor shipping ARM64 binaries, even if Electron stuff. Also it is important to notice that many developers using that machine are using the ia32 version of VSCode and this version will benefit them (and it more native to the platform).
- patagurbon 6y ago
  Is it not possible to compile editors like emacs or Sublime Text for ARM64? I know very little about native programming but surely GCC/Clang/Visual C++ have ARM64 compilation targets?
  - ryukafalz 6y ago
    It certainly is! Not sure what the situation is on Windows but Linux distros that have ARM versions typically have nearly all the same software that you’d expect on x86 in their repos. (I’m thinking of Debian in particular here, but I suspect others are similar.)
  - soapdog 6y ago
    It is a chicken and egg problem. Many languages do not yet support Windows on ARM, so you can't rely on them to build stuff for the new platform. For example there is no official release of NodeJS, Python, Ruby, Perl, on the platform. Lots of FOSS rely on gnu stuff which is usually compiled on windows using mingw/msys2/cygwin, all of which are not available for Windows on ARM. So you can't easily port stuff. You can run Visual Studio and cross-compile from ia32 to arm64 on a Surface Pro X but that is unsupported by Microsoft who wants you to have two machines, one running x64 and compiling stuff and another running arm64 and testing stuff. That is unreasonable for small independent developers. So until the development ecosystem is a bit better, porting stuff will still have a lot of friction and that is why for now, IMHO, every port needs to be cherished.
dmortin 6y ago
True, but remember when many apps were not made for Linux, because it was not worth it? With Electron at least we have apps like VSCode for Linux too. Not ideal, but better than nothing.
- danieldk 6y ago
  But then unfortunately, even then some companies do not provide their Electron app on Linux e.g. Notion. Though, it is usually easy to rewrap the version from another platform using Electron on Linux. E.g. writing a Nix derivation for Notion on Linux isn't much more work than for any other Electron application: https://github.com/danieldk/nix-packages/blob/master/pkgs/notion/default.nix https://github.com/danieldk/nix-packages/blob/master/pkgs/no... (Not tested more recently though, I don't use Notion a lot.)
  - smhmd 6y ago
    > But then unfortunately, even then some companies do not provide their Electron app on Linux e.g. Notion. Add Figma to the mix. Since I moved to Linux exclusively, I've abandoned plugin authoring. Granted, there is a Linux-Figma[0] app, but every time I try it, it doesn't take long before something essential (e.g. fonts) breaks. [0]: https://github.com/Figma-Linux/figma-linux https://github.com/Figma-Linux/figma-linux
- jcelerier 6y ago
  > True, but remember when many apps were not made for Linux, because it was not worth it? With Electron at least we have apps like VSCode for Linux too. Not ideal, but better than nothing. and yet on Linux you had already the entirety of debian already available in native ARM64 years ago, which is a lot more than what you have on windows ARM64.
- jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
  Blender, Photoshop, Premiere, Maya, ZBrush, CATIA, AutoCAD, and hundreds of other specialized tools are not moving to Electron anytime soon... My point is that we shouldn’t embrace for Electron just because we want applications in Linux. In addition, Election is not a guarantee of a Linux port either.
paxys 6y ago
I feel like even more of a dinosaur then because "native" to me means compiled for the target processor architecture vs being emulated (which is exactly what this is about).
SahAssar 6y ago
Electron is running natively. What is running in electron is not.

I totally agree with you there, buuut, before this release VSCode on a Surface Pro X would be Electron running as a ia32 emulated app, which is not only web technologies but also the wrong ISA. I'd love to have sublime text, textadept, or any other real native editor running under ARM64 on Windows but so far they are not available. This VSCode is the first editor shipping ARM64 binaries, even if Electron stuff. Also it is important to notice that many developers using that machine are using the ia32 version of VSCode and this version will benefit them (and it more native to the platform).

patagurbon 6y ago
Is it not possible to compile editors like emacs or Sublime Text for ARM64? I know very little about native programming but surely GCC/Clang/Visual C++ have ARM64 compilation targets?
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  It certainly is! Not sure what the situation is on Windows but Linux distros that have ARM versions typically have nearly all the same software that you’d expect on x86 in their repos. (I’m thinking of Debian in particular here, but I suspect others are similar.)
- soapdog 6y ago
  It is a chicken and egg problem. Many languages do not yet support Windows on ARM, so you can't rely on them to build stuff for the new platform. For example there is no official release of NodeJS, Python, Ruby, Perl, on the platform. Lots of FOSS rely on gnu stuff which is usually compiled on windows using mingw/msys2/cygwin, all of which are not available for Windows on ARM. So you can't easily port stuff. You can run Visual Studio and cross-compile from ia32 to arm64 on a Surface Pro X but that is unsupported by Microsoft who wants you to have two machines, one running x64 and compiling stuff and another running arm64 and testing stuff. That is unreasonable for small independent developers. So until the development ecosystem is a bit better, porting stuff will still have a lot of friction and that is why for now, IMHO, every port needs to be cherished.

dmortin 6y ago

True, but remember when many apps were not made for Linux, because it was not worth it? With Electron at least we have apps like VSCode for Linux too. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

danieldk 6y ago
But then unfortunately, even then some companies do not provide their Electron app on Linux e.g. Notion. Though, it is usually easy to rewrap the version from another platform using Electron on Linux. E.g. writing a Nix derivation for Notion on Linux isn't much more work than for any other Electron application: https://github.com/danieldk/nix-packages/blob/master/pkgs/notion/default.nix https://github.com/danieldk/nix-packages/blob/master/pkgs/no... (Not tested more recently though, I don't use Notion a lot.)
- smhmd 6y ago
  > But then unfortunately, even then some companies do not provide their Electron app on Linux e.g. Notion. Add Figma to the mix. Since I moved to Linux exclusively, I've abandoned plugin authoring. Granted, there is a Linux-Figma[0] app, but every time I try it, it doesn't take long before something essential (e.g. fonts) breaks. [0]: https://github.com/Figma-Linux/figma-linux https://github.com/Figma-Linux/figma-linux
jcelerier 6y ago
> True, but remember when many apps were not made for Linux, because it was not worth it? With Electron at least we have apps like VSCode for Linux too. Not ideal, but better than nothing. and yet on Linux you had already the entirety of debian already available in native ARM64 years ago, which is a lot more than what you have on windows ARM64.
jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
Blender, Photoshop, Premiere, Maya, ZBrush, CATIA, AutoCAD, and hundreds of other specialized tools are not moving to Electron anytime soon... My point is that we shouldn’t embrace for Electron just because we want applications in Linux. In addition, Election is not a guarantee of a Linux port either.

paxys 6y ago

I feel like even more of a dinosaur then because "native" to me means compiled for the target processor architecture vs being emulated (which is exactly what this is about).

SahAssar 6y ago

Electron is running natively. What is running in electron is not.