20 ms·

Tauri: An Electron alternative written in Rust

1113 points by metalwhale 6y ago

hashedout 6y ago
Hmm, there doesn't seem to be any real applications made with it yet. Though, the roadmap looks good.
- yannoninator 6y ago
  Not sure why this is downvoted, this is a good point. Before people are getting hyped around this, this is alpha software and not production ready.
hundchenkatze 6y ago
previous discussion from 7 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769424 Looks like they're making good progress!
Thaxll 6y ago
It's writen in Rust it must be good.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  I supposed you're being sarcastic. The realistic version of this is that we have experience and evidence that tells us that it has the potential to be more performant.
  - postalrat 6y ago
    So does the assembly version I just started work on.
    - ibraheemdev 6y ago
      Are you disagreeing that Rust makes it easier to write performant software?
    - neysofu 6y ago
      Oh shoot! If only the industry realized sooner that everything ultimately compiles to Assembly and thus decades of PL research were utterly useless! We were wrong about this the whole time. How could we not realize? We better off rewrite everything in Assembly to squeeze out every clock cycle!
cdata 6y ago
This project is cool, and it is cool to have alternatives to Electron for cases that call for something like Electron. Something that is also cool is that Rust runs really well on the web (via WASM), which opens the door to building projects primarily with Rust and deploying them to the web with a web front-end. It will not suit every case, but in some cases it might save you from asking users to download a separate app that bundles a web browser engine.
pachico 6y ago
Each Electron application seems to think it's the only one running in a computer. It's the only way, I imagine, they think it's acceptable the amount of resources they need to run.
- hctaw 6y ago
  As a developer shipping executables to MacOS, Windows, and Linux today this is the only assumption I can make. I cannot assume that dependencies exist or are the correct version, I can't assume the user knows that package managers exist or that the dependencies shipped by the package managers are correct, I can't assume anything exists on PATH or LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and I can't even assume that libc or libc++ on a system will work with the executable I compiled on mine. Meanwhile 16GB of memory is becoming common and 1TB SSDs cost less than $100. So taking up a little bit more space saves me time and money and reduces the cost to ship to my customers. Oh well.
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    It isn't your fault that you have to do this, it is that our industry hasn't created enough quality, easy to use, cross platform gui libraries for popular languages, such that the only viable place to turn is to use a whole web browser.
    - hctaw 6y ago
      I didn't say I was shipping GUI software ;)
    - qbasic_forever 6y ago
      We've had about 60 years and multiple huge attempts at it, and IMHO HTML & CSS _are_ the easy to use cross-platform GUI platform. Nothing else stuck--flash, java swing, qt, etc. were all super capable and promising but failed to gain mass usage. HTML & CSS is the way. Nothing in existence has as much capability, developer usage and talent pool, accessibility and internationalization features, etc. A good GUI system is much more than just getting boxes and text on the screen.
twarge 6y ago
Downloaded the demo app for macOS; feels like an alien UI even though effort was clearly made to use system widgets. On the positive side, the app is only 4 MB and consumes 50 MB at runtime, so at least they've succeeded in that important aspect.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  Its consuming more than that at runtime I believe, you just don't see it because its using webkit in another process? I recall some discussion along those lines.
- kumarkeshav 6y ago
  hey twarge, can you please test our app and provide feedback. it would be really awesome if you provide some feedback. here is our app https://getorionapp.com https://getorionapp.com
- vulcan01 6y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, this is just because the CSS styling isn't that good, right? Take Slack (which uses Electron) as an example: it looks almost the same on Windows and Mac, but it looks good — because the styling (through CSS) is good.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    Is CSS really the major factor in the memory usage of an Electron app?
    - vulcan01 6y ago
      I wasn't responding to the memory usage portion of the GP's message, but rather to the alien feel.
  - millstone 6y ago
    You're talking about how the app looks, but GP was talking about how the app feels. Slack looks nice but feels quite broken. For example, its non native context menus are beautiful, but do not dismiss properly, do not support single-click selection, do not support spacebar to pick, do not support type-select... When I use Slack I am constantly frustrated that things don't work the way my other Mac apps work.
netghost 6y ago
The "patterns" documentation seems like a good place to get oriented around the ways they suggest people use this Tauri: https://tauri.studio/en/docs/usage/patterns/about-patterns https://tauri.studio/en/docs/usage/patterns/about-patterns
brundolf 6y ago
Looks like it uses system webviews instead of bundling a copy of Chromium? This to me seems like the real headlining feature, but strangely I had to dig pretty deep to find it: https://tauri.studio/en/docs/getting-started/technical-details#user-interface https://tauri.studio/en/docs/getting-started/technical-detai... I kind of wonder why it took this long for someone to try this approach. It just makes a whole lot more sense on the surface. Interesting thing I just thought about: since users don't get to choose their system webview, I wonder if this has the potential to broaden browser diversity a little bit?
- andai 6y ago
  I heard about a similar project a few months ago but I can't recall the name. I think the downside is that each OS has its own idiosyncratic webview.
  - dsizzle 6y ago
    Revery? https://github.com/revery-ui/revery https://github.com/revery-ui/revery
    - lilactown 6y ago
      AFAIK Revery doesn't use webviews, it is based on Skia
  - genezeta 6y ago
    Neutralino, maybe? One significant difference regarding webviews is Neutralino on Windows is using an outdated WebControl (MSHTML/Trident based) and this one seems to be using at least WebView (EdgeHTML based) or even WebView2 (Edge-Chromium) if available, both of which are a major improvement.
  - alpaca128 6y ago
    I recently discovered NeutralinoJS, but I haven't tried it yet.
- hu3 6y ago
hobofan 6y ago
The Electron alternative that possibly isn't one. Electron apps are usually quite heavy because they bundle Chrome. Tauri doesn't and instead relies on webview, which uses a different browser engine dependent on your platform, with all the incompatibilities that come with it.
- Tuna-Fish 6y ago
  > Tauri doesn't and instead relies on webview, which uses a different browser engine dependent on your platform, with all the incompatibilities that come with it. Isn't windows system webview now a chromium fork? This should make incompatibility on the major platforms now much less of an issue.
  - smasher164 6y ago
    People act as if they haven’t dealt browser incompatibilities in the past. Just feature-detect/polyfill and move on.
    - notatoad 6y ago
      Some people haven't dealt with browser incompatibilities in the past. Not every developer comes from a webapp background, and electron is a platform to develop desktop apps. desktop app developers don't want to deal with polyfills and feature-detection in their platform.
      - Kaze404 6y ago
        It's weird to want all the benefits of web development without it's unfortunate quirks in my opinion. If desktop developers don't want to deal with them, which I think is reasonable, they have loads of other tools they can use to build desktop apps (and give the users a better experience most likely).
        judge2020 6y ago
        It's not weird - every developer wants to 'just code' their features/business logic without having to deal with the pain points of the tech. They choose web tech for their app because the opportunity cost of learning a desktop-native language is the time that could be spent bootstrapping an electron app and getting the product out the door earlier.
flowerlad 6y ago
On their web site I don't see a quick answer to the most obvious question: How's it better than Electron? Does it require less resources than Electron and if so how does it accomplish it?
azangru 6y ago
Will PWAs make Electron obsolete?
- Solid_Applaud 6y ago
  Unlikely, because Electron is very useful in exposing system and hardware APIs.
  - alooPotato 6y ago
    For most apps - wouldn't PWA's be sufficient as implemented today. Presumably, they'll expose more and more hardware APIs over time?
    - qbasic_forever 6y ago
      Even basic things like reading and writing files from the filesystem are obnoxiously difficult in a pure browser or PWA environment. Storing state in general is full of enormous pitfalls and eccentricities, like 50mb limits for some browsers or just completely random total deletion of all app state at the browser's whim.
      - alooPotato 6y ago
        Seems like they are making a lot of progress on that front: https://web.dev/file-system-access/ https://web.dev/file-system-access/
        Solid_Applaud 6y ago
        Fine, but these are proposals. We want something we can work with today, something that we have the power to hack on that will expose new systems we come up with to HTML/JS, and that is the niche that Electron-like systems fill really well.
        alooPotato 6y ago
pupdogg 6y ago
Whenever I'm reminded of Electron, I'm thankful to have experienced WinAmp!
- sterlind 6y ago
  ironic, because Electron apps should be easily skinnable. just put new CSS and images, maybe some new html, especially if there's some way of exposing e.g. the UI components so you can alter the layout and such.
  - Ashanmaril 6y ago
    I used to use an Electron wrapper for Google Play Music (may it rest in peace) and the developer of that did this. The default colour scheme for that product was a harsh orange, but the Electron client allowed you to override the CSS to change that base color, as well as switch between light/dark mode.
mch82 6y ago
> Today, Tauri uses Rust for the backend - but in the not too distant future, other backends like Go, Nim, Python, Csharp etc. will be possible. This is because we are maintaining the official Rust bindings to the webview organisation and plan to let you switch out the backend for your needs. Since our API can be implemented in any language with C interop, full compliance is only a PR away. Sounds promising. I’d love a web view front end for Python as an alternative to tkinter.
swagonomixxx 6y ago
This kind of makes me think... is there room for a much more stripped down version of Chromium that is suitable for lower memory footprint? Or is this impossible? It looks like Tauri uses system webviews, which use a lot less memory, but the burden is then on the developer to make sure that they build essentially 3 (maybe more) UI's on platforms that might change under their feet. That's why the Electron approach is simpler - it trades of performance for uniformity of experience across the major platforms. But I'm wondering if it really has to be this way. Do modern browsers really need 2G of RAM in order to send and receive messages in a chat box (looking at you, Slack).
- munificent 6y ago
  > is there room for a much more stripped down version of Chromium that is suitable for lower memory footprint? That's basically the history of Flutter. The initial goal was something like "Web: The Good Parts" and the results of that experiment led them to where they are now.
  - ducktective 6y ago
    I mean, where are they now? Promising or DoA? I fear touching it because of it being a Google project (killedbygoogle.com)
    - chgibb 6y ago
      We're pretty bought into Flutter. No cross platform toolkit is perfect but Flutter is miles ahead of everything else. For a not very scientific analysis: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=flutter,%2Fg%2F11h03gfxy9,xamarin https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...
      - nwienert 6y ago
        It’s definitely not miles ahead of just about anything. It has significant tradeoffs and fits some projects better than others. React Native has quite a few benefits over Flutter. Especially if building for the web, I’d actually say Flutter is only usable now if you don’t build your web app with it. Which in my cost benefit analysis makes it miles behind RN, but of course, that’s why it depends.
grishka 6y ago
I only have one question. Was the name inspired by Stargate?
- soylentcola 6y ago
  That's what I was wondering. I've watched a decent amount of it but my GF is the biggest fan I've ever met (so, naturally, that's what stuck out when I saw the article).
- maxk42 6y ago
  It's either that or a reference to the Tauri civilization that dwindled some 3,000 years ago in the Crimean peninsula. I'm leaning toward the former.
- pspeter3 6y ago
  This was my first thought as well.
- nklayman 6y ago
  It's actually inspired by the star system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Tauri_star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Tauri_star).
- BrianOnHN 6y ago
  I scrolled just for this.
pjmlp 6y ago
Without wanting to attack Tauri's author work in any way, for me, the only sensible alternative to Electron are native webviews and daemons/services talking to the user's installed browsers.
- dmix 6y ago
  Isn’t that what this is basically?
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Is it? I couldn't find it.
    - tene 6y ago
      https://tauri.studio/en/docs/getting-started/technical-details https://tauri.studio/en/docs/getting-started/technical-detai... "The first generation user interface in Tauri apps leverages Cocoa/WebKit on macOS, gtk-webkit2 on Linux and Webkit via EdgeHTML / Chakra on Windows. Tauri leverages the MIT licensed work known as webview that has been incorporated into the officiall webview_rust bindings."
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Thanks, I stand corrected.
    - dmix 6y ago
      Definitely needs a better homepage, one better targeted at developers, which so many fail to do.
  - tedunangst 6y ago
    So if I install a Tauri app I can access it with Firefox?
dmix 6y ago
Just a note to the marketing site developer I wasn’t familiar with the “Brownfield” term and that was the first one listed. For others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownfield_(software_development) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownfield_(software_developme... Also the first comment by brunsolf might be worth considering as the first description.
sam0x17 6y ago
This is huge. I've been waiting for the equivalent of this to emerge in the crystal lang ecosystem for years (gotta get them to finish windows support first). I might dust off Rust again just because this exists.
math0ne 6y ago
I love this feature roadmap!
CivBase 6y ago
From the roadmap: > Go, Nim, Python, C++ and other bindings are possible with the stable API. I think something like this might actually have a lot of potential, specifically because it's much easier to create bindings for other languages with Rust than with JavaScript. You're stuck with a NodeJS runtime to run an Electron app, even if you "compile" it. You could theoretically make bindings to another language, but you'd still be dependent on that NodeJS runtime. But this could theoretically be compiled to a relatively lightweight DLL and interfaced with using practically any language you want. The page logic would still need to be JavaScript, of course, but that's just the nature of webviews for now.
shomyo 6y ago
'Written in Rust' is a new 'I use Arch, btw'.
jmaygarden 6y ago
I started to build some internal tools (that utilize Rust libraries to interface with hardware) using Tauri last year. That effort ended after trying to cross-compile to aarch64 and hitting a ton of roadblocks. It looks like it is still an open issue. So, Raspberry Pi, for example, is not supported. https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri/issues/941 https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri/issues/941
filereaper 6y ago
Will this at some point make Electron apps like Slack/VSCode less hungry and more resource efficient? My cpu fans spin up everytime Slack is open.
- qudat 6y ago
  This never happens to me. I run slack in my browser as just another tab.
IceWreck 6y ago
On the go side, there is Wails (https://wails.app/ https://wails.app/) which is pretty popular
k__ 6y ago
Doesn't seem like a big improvement when they still use web tech. I'm all for web tech, but that's what makes Electron no better than a browser. Revery seems like a much better solution.
OJFord 6y ago
Huh, funny seeing this here, started using it just a week or so ago, really like it so far. I'm writing my frontend in JavaScript with Svelte, and able to make impressively smooth RPCs to the Rust backend with Tauri's API. Really nice work. Edit: actually that's something quite important to add perhaps that the headline doesn't make completely clear - it's not merely 'written in' Rust, but like Electron gives you Rust (resp. Node) to use.
thereddaikon 6y ago
Can we just stop using browsers as a framework for desktop applications? That's not what they are meant for. Electron and everything like it is the ultimate expression of developer laziness.
- Nagyman 6y ago
  Can we stop attributing technology choices to laziness? Sounds like a _lazy_ evaluation and presumption of someone else's motivations. More seriously, there are far more folks familiar with browser frontend technologies than the myriad of desktop frameworks, rife with their own challenges.
- qudat 6y ago
  There's a reason why no one wants to build a desktop app using Qt and it's not laziness.
pookeh 6y ago
Why doesn't Electron debundle itself into the Runtime vs Application? Much like .Net Runtime. Electron can then be installed in a single spot in the system and all Electron apps pick it up from that spot. You can install bundle the Electron Runtime in the installer (200mb installer is no biggie for a desktop app) but you get all the benefits of consolidating RAM usage across.
- spijdar 6y ago
  Well, the .Net runtime isn't exactly the most successful story from an end user perspective, where you occasionally run into weird problems with mismatched runtimes or missing runtimes or similar. Granted, it's not that often, but it feels like a lot of apps relying on it just ship their own copies of the runtime. Still saves resources if multiple apps use the same runtime version, but...
  - neeleshs 6y ago
    If the installer could do this instead.. Check if the app is supported by an existing runtime, if not download it and make it available globally, otherwise use the current runtime and download only the app
- edflsafoiewq 6y ago
  It already is. For example, on Arch Linux, Electron is packaged as a separate binary and the eg. VS Code binary is just a shell script that points electron to the right entrypoint #!/bin/bash ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE=1 exec electron9 /usr/lib/code/out/cli.js /usr/lib/code/code.js "$@" But most Electron apps prefer to bundle the whole runtime with their app.
- ziftface 6y ago
  That's an interesting point, especially since V8 is already used for running multiple applications that need to be sandboxed from each other. It would probably be a big effort though, and to get any real benefit from it, applications would actually have to start switching to a different fork of electron. But I often have multiple electron applications running at once so this would be pretty nice.
f-word 6y ago
Does this let me bundle signed snapshots so random miscreants can't tamper with my app? I couldn't find it, and it's the one thing I'm desperately looking for in this kind of platforms
taejavu 6y ago
Is it easier to test than electron? Cypress doesn’t support electron and that makes me sad
keskadale 6y ago
Question: Why do we need Electron alternatives? Why do we need to develop applications that need a bundled browser to run? Why can't we just use GTK/Qt?
- y2bd 6y ago
  The two main reasons I’ve always heard against QT in particular are 1. Non C++ devs don’t want to write C++/participate in the C++ ecosystem at all. While there are plenty of QT binding libraries for other languages, they seem to be of varying and unpredictable quality. 2. QT has potentially difficult licensing: https://www.qt.io/licensing/ https://www.qt.io/licensing/ Disclaimer: I’ve never used QT.
  - hannofcart 6y ago
    Their licensing is written horribly, to just FUD companies into buying their commercial license. However, the library components offered under LGPL3 are all you need to ship a perfectly good desktop app. The GPL3 licensed stuff listed in the comparison chart on the page you linked are typically the utility applications like Qt Designer which you won't need to ship with your application anyway. It's unfortunate how the company backing Qt is going about this. But it's a great framework overall. (At my last firm, we shipped several apps via Qt and it's always been a joy to use.)
- ketzo 6y ago
  There is a lot of effort currently being put into creating web applications. It would be nice if we could use the fruits of that labor on desktop and mobile applications. That's how I understand it, anyway.
  - eivarv 6y ago
    It would also be nice if people understood and really appreciated the trade-offs of doing so – i.e. hogging resources, killing batteries, potentially wrecking the end users' experience and ability to multitask efficiently, etc.
- 6y ago
yannoninator 6y ago
I think the desktop seriously needs a production, RAM and developer friendly breakthrough that isn't Electron. Tauri may be it, but the desktop SO needs this moment, I don't want to see 50 years on and Electron is still being used.
- calibas 6y ago
  There's React Native for Windows/macOS, though if you don't like Electron I doubt that's very appealing either. I've had some nice experiences using PyInstaller to create desktop apps.
  - ianlevesque 6y ago
    React Native is fantastic as a user on macOS and Windows. Personally I think if there’s any hope of winning the Electron crowd over that’s it. I like to develop with stronger typed languages than JS, but there's clearly demand given electron’s popularity.
    - calibas 6y ago
      I started getting in the habit of using Typescript with JS. It's annoying at first, but worth it for any decent sized codebase. All the bugs from JavaScript's unexpected type conversions just disappear.
  - scarlac 6y ago
    Depends on why OP doesn't like Electron. To be clear to everyone: Electron and React Native are not alike. Electron is a big web browser. React Native work completely differently: It neither renders, computes, or runs the same. React Native uses the Hermes engine, puppeteering native components.
- eivarv 6y ago
  For the GUI-parts (and more) there's always wxWidgets and Qt, at least.
  - 6y ago
Const-me 6y ago
If someone paid me to do something similar, I would probably be building on top of this: https://github.com/Const-me/Vrmac https://github.com/Const-me/Vrmac There’re two hard problems there. One is how to render vector graphics and fonts. So far, only web browsers do that in a cross-platform way. Windows has it’s Direct2D and DirectWrite, while Linux has nothing comparable, unfortunately. Another higher level one is how to build easy to use GUI library on top of that. Have not approached that one. I have a few ideas but did nothing so far to address them, lately I’m too busy with other projects.
- eivarv 6y ago
  Why not just wrap/abstract the native platform APIs (like what wxWidgets does)?
  - Const-me 6y ago
    These native platform APIs don’t use GPU much, or at all. That’s true even on Windows where GPU support is better than anywhere else. wxWidgets wraps Win32 stuff, it does not use WPF (backed by DirectX 9.0c) nor UWP (backed by Direct3D 11+, Direct2D, and DirectWrite). Count of pixels in displays was improving way faster than RAM bandwidth or CPU performance. Currently, this does not matter much on desktops, matters somewhat on laptops, and critically important for many mobile and embedded platforms. When you want to render anything at all at native display resolution and refresh rate, GPU stuff is the only option that works well enough.
Sephr 6y ago
I'd rather have development resumed on Carlo. You can re-use the existing Chrome install on a user's device without having to rely on a system-provided WebView.
- CivBase 6y ago
  What if I don't have Chrome installed?
  - Sephr 6y ago
    Then Carlo could auto-install it, and it wouldn't have to be a unique installation just for one app.
worik 6y ago
"The core is built with Rust and the CLI leverages Node.js" Sublime to the gorblimy in one sentence!
themihai 6y ago
I think a better electron would be an Electron that you can build only with the features you use(i.e I don't use websql, I don't need CORS, web notifications, nfc, bluetooth, hundreds of legacy js and css features, no pdf/print support etc). I'm pretty sure that if you can drop all the stuff you don't use you get better performance/efficiency.
- ianlevesque 6y ago
  It goes deeper than that. Frickin’ Spotify has a manual toggle for whether or not I want Hardware Acceleration turned on or not. It’s not the only one. I don’t have any way to know which setting doesn’t spin up my laptop fans and burn me. How about just building your app in such a way that I don’t have to manually configure that. We’ve had music players since the 90’s, I don’t see why this is so hard.
hit8run 6y ago
I shipped a Mac app to the App Store using native web views via macgap in 2013 :) Idea is not new but still better than electron up until today.
pi_el_59 6y ago
i've also heard of this alternative https://www.outrunlabs.com/revery/ https://www.outrunlabs.com/revery/
pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
What part does node.js play in this?
exacube 6y ago
Does using the underlying platform's webview make things faster? What are the benefits to end users?
- dguaraglia 6y ago
  It'll make applications smaller by not having to bundle a full copy of Chromium for each application. It may make applications slightly faster if the webview is already loaded in memory, and it'll probably save some RAM because applications would share some memory.
soheil 6y ago
Why can't there be a docker-like Electron running a base version of Chromium with additional layers for other versions support for different apps on top of it? This would both save more resources and lower each app's bundle size significantly.
jszymborski 6y ago
I just love that they have different "patterns", which truly makes this a flexible platform. I'm personally a big fan of the "Lockdown" [0] pattern, which avoids spinning up a local server and has a far more conservative security model. [0] https://tauri.studio/en/docs/usage/patterns/lockdown https://tauri.studio/en/docs/usage/patterns/lockdown
c-smile 6y ago
In what sense it is an alternative to ElectronJS? If size than not that much as Tauri is based on Node.JS that is 56 Mb executable by itself. Yet Node.JS is pure C/C++ code. It is not clear what does "written in Rust" mean at all and what benefits Rust provides in that setup. For the comparison: my scapp.js.exe ( https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-js-sdk#demos https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-js-sdk#demos ) that is Sciter.JS packaged as standalone exe without dependencies is of size 5.3mb - at least 10 times less than Node.JS, Tauri and ElectronJS. That exe includes HTML/CSS, QuickJS (ES2020) engines and essential portions of Node.JS runtime: https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-js-sdk/blob/main/docs/md/module-sys.md https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-js-sdk/blob/main/docs/md/m... So is the question above, alternative in what sense?
- datagram 6y ago
  Tauri apps don't use the NodeJS runtime. You have to write your app's backend in Rust. Like you said, the NodeJS runtime is tens of MB; if you look at their demo app you'll see that it doesn't even break 3MB.
- hojjat12000 6y ago
  If you look at the website you will see that it is not bundling Node.js, apps can be as small as less than 1mb. It is written in rust (because the backend is, also it will integrate with Deno in future which in Rust). It is still in development, but if you look at the website you will see the features that it provides or will provide (such as system integration) and the value that it adds.
davej 6y ago
I've been following this project for a while, it's super exciting. Unfortunately, progress seems to have slowed somewhat in the last 6 months. Loading Node in the renderer is a broken pattern that is full of compatibility issues and security vulnerabilities. Electron have come to realise this too and seem to be pushing towards ContextIsolation and explicitly defined bridges between the "backend" node process and the renderer.
galaxyLogic 6y ago
Reading all these comments about WebView compatibility issues makes me wonder why not just do Progressive Web Apps"? For the server the OS doesn't matter, and for the browser compatibility issues just deal with them like any web-app would. What is wrong with separate client and server?
- niels_bom 6y ago
  Isn’t there a lot more work to do around local IO and permissions with PWAs?
  - galaxyLogic 6y ago
    Not sure but why would there be? A server is a server whether it runs in the same machine or somewhere else. But for development purposes yes there is the complication of having to acquire and install a certificate to your server which your browser will trust without questions. So yes, that is (at least) one factor making PWA development more cumbersome than it should be.
JanSt 6y ago
does it support the bluetooth web api?
jokoon 6y ago
I can't help to remind everyone to watch The Birth and Death of Javascript: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death... Cousins of electrons and their RAM requirements are a steep reminder that the DOM is cancerous and will have to evolve and suffer from deprecation. Or maybe introduce metrics and good performance practices?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jjjeii3 6y ago
Blazor can now also be used to write cross-platform desktop applications with C# similar to Electron: https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2021/02/17/net-6-preview-1.aspx https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2021/02/17/net-6-p... C# will then be compiled to WebAssembly.
antihero 6y ago
Wouldn't a better solution to be use something like https://github.com/microsoft/react-native-macos https://github.com/microsoft/react-native-macos ?
Chyzwar 6y ago
I just tried and integrating with create-react-app was an breeze. I would consider that as an alternative for electron.
bobblywobbles 6y ago
I appreciate the desire to move towards a lower memory footprint, but it seems they are still many months behind the Electron team and what they are doing. I am a bit bias, I am the author of a security-focused Electron template.

1113 points by metalwhale 6y ago

hashedout 6y ago

Hmm, there doesn't seem to be any real applications made with it yet. Though, the roadmap looks good.

yannoninator 6y ago
Not sure why this is downvoted, this is a good point. Before people are getting hyped around this, this is alpha software and not production ready.

hundchenkatze 6y ago

previous discussion from 7 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769424 Looks like they're making good progress!

Thaxll 6y ago

It's writen in Rust it must be good.

happytoexplain 6y ago
I supposed you're being sarcastic. The realistic version of this is that we have experience and evidence that tells us that it has the potential to be more performant.
- postalrat 6y ago
  So does the assembly version I just started work on.
  - ibraheemdev 6y ago
    Are you disagreeing that Rust makes it easier to write performant software?
  - neysofu 6y ago
    Oh shoot! If only the industry realized sooner that everything ultimately compiles to Assembly and thus decades of PL research were utterly useless! We were wrong about this the whole time. How could we not realize? We better off rewrite everything in Assembly to squeeze out every clock cycle!

cdata 6y ago

This project is cool, and it is cool to have alternatives to Electron for cases that call for something like Electron. Something that is also cool is that Rust runs really well on the web (via WASM), which opens the door to building projects primarily with Rust and deploying them to the web with a web front-end. It will not suit every case, but in some cases it might save you from asking users to download a separate app that bundles a web browser engine.

pachico 6y ago

Each Electron application seems to think it's the only one running in a computer. It's the only way, I imagine, they think it's acceptable the amount of resources they need to run.

hctaw 6y ago
As a developer shipping executables to MacOS, Windows, and Linux today this is the only assumption I can make. I cannot assume that dependencies exist or are the correct version, I can't assume the user knows that package managers exist or that the dependencies shipped by the package managers are correct, I can't assume anything exists on PATH or LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and I can't even assume that libc or libc++ on a system will work with the executable I compiled on mine. Meanwhile 16GB of memory is becoming common and 1TB SSDs cost less than $100. So taking up a little bit more space saves me time and money and reduces the cost to ship to my customers. Oh well.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  It isn't your fault that you have to do this, it is that our industry hasn't created enough quality, easy to use, cross platform gui libraries for popular languages, such that the only viable place to turn is to use a whole web browser.
  - hctaw 6y ago
    I didn't say I was shipping GUI software ;)
  - qbasic_forever 6y ago
    We've had about 60 years and multiple huge attempts at it, and IMHO HTML & CSS _are_ the easy to use cross-platform GUI platform. Nothing else stuck--flash, java swing, qt, etc. were all super capable and promising but failed to gain mass usage. HTML & CSS is the way. Nothing in existence has as much capability, developer usage and talent pool, accessibility and internationalization features, etc. A good GUI system is much more than just getting boxes and text on the screen.

twarge 6y ago

Downloaded the demo app for macOS; feels like an alien UI even though effort was clearly made to use system widgets. On the positive side, the app is only 4 MB and consumes 50 MB at runtime, so at least they've succeeded in that important aspect.

gameswithgo 6y ago
Its consuming more than that at runtime I believe, you just don't see it because its using webkit in another process? I recall some discussion along those lines.
kumarkeshav 6y ago
hey twarge, can you please test our app and provide feedback. it would be really awesome if you provide some feedback. here is our app https://getorionapp.com https://getorionapp.com
vulcan01 6y ago
If I'm not mistaken, this is just because the CSS styling isn't that good, right? Take Slack (which uses Electron) as an example: it looks almost the same on Windows and Mac, but it looks good — because the styling (through CSS) is good.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Is CSS really the major factor in the memory usage of an Electron app?
  - vulcan01 6y ago
    I wasn't responding to the memory usage portion of the GP's message, but rather to the alien feel.
- millstone 6y ago
  You're talking about how the app looks, but GP was talking about how the app feels. Slack looks nice but feels quite broken. For example, its non native context menus are beautiful, but do not dismiss properly, do not support single-click selection, do not support spacebar to pick, do not support type-select... When I use Slack I am constantly frustrated that things don't work the way my other Mac apps work.

netghost 6y ago

The "patterns" documentation seems like a good place to get oriented around the ways they suggest people use this Tauri: https://tauri.studio/en/docs/usage/patterns/about-patterns https://tauri.studio/en/docs/usage/patterns/about-patterns

brundolf 6y ago

Looks like it uses system webviews instead of bundling a copy of Chromium? This to me seems like the real headlining feature, but strangely I had to dig pretty deep to find it: https://tauri.studio/en/docs/getting-started/technical-details#user-interface https://tauri.studio/en/docs/getting-started/technical-detai... I kind of wonder why it took this long for someone to try this approach. It just makes a whole lot more sense on the surface. Interesting thing I just thought about: since users don't get to choose their system webview, I wonder if this has the potential to broaden browser diversity a little bit?

andai 6y ago
I heard about a similar project a few months ago but I can't recall the name. I think the downside is that each OS has its own idiosyncratic webview.
- dsizzle 6y ago
  Revery? https://github.com/revery-ui/revery https://github.com/revery-ui/revery
  - lilactown 6y ago
    AFAIK Revery doesn't use webviews, it is based on Skia
- genezeta 6y ago
  Neutralino, maybe? One significant difference regarding webviews is Neutralino on Windows is using an outdated WebControl (MSHTML/Trident based) and this one seems to be using at least WebView (EdgeHTML based) or even WebView2 (Edge-Chromium) if available, both of which are a major improvement.
- alpaca128 6y ago
  I recently discovered NeutralinoJS, but I haven't tried it yet.
hu3 6y ago

hobofan 6y ago

The Electron alternative that possibly isn't one. Electron apps are usually quite heavy because they bundle Chrome. Tauri doesn't and instead relies on webview, which uses a different browser engine dependent on your platform, with all the incompatibilities that come with it.

Tuna-Fish 6y ago
> Tauri doesn't and instead relies on webview, which uses a different browser engine dependent on your platform, with all the incompatibilities that come with it. Isn't windows system webview now a chromium fork? This should make incompatibility on the major platforms now much less of an issue.
- smasher164 6y ago
  People act as if they haven’t dealt browser incompatibilities in the past. Just feature-detect/polyfill and move on.
  - notatoad 6y ago
    Some people haven't dealt with browser incompatibilities in the past. Not every developer comes from a webapp background, and electron is a platform to develop desktop apps. desktop app developers don't want to deal with polyfills and feature-detection in their platform.
    - Kaze404 6y ago
      It's weird to want all the benefits of web development without it's unfortunate quirks in my opinion. If desktop developers don't want to deal with them, which I think is reasonable, they have loads of other tools they can use to build desktop apps (and give the users a better experience most likely).
      - judge2020 6y ago
        It's not weird - every developer wants to 'just code' their features/business logic without having to deal with the pain points of the tech. They choose web tech for their app because the opportunity cost of learning a desktop-native language is the time that could be spent bootstrapping an electron app and getting the product out the door earlier.

flowerlad 6y ago

On their web site I don't see a quick answer to the most obvious question: How's it better than Electron? Does it require less resources than Electron and if so how does it accomplish it?

azangru 6y ago

Will PWAs make Electron obsolete?

Solid_Applaud 6y ago
Unlikely, because Electron is very useful in exposing system and hardware APIs.
- alooPotato 6y ago
  For most apps - wouldn't PWA's be sufficient as implemented today. Presumably, they'll expose more and more hardware APIs over time?
  - qbasic_forever 6y ago
    Even basic things like reading and writing files from the filesystem are obnoxiously difficult in a pure browser or PWA environment. Storing state in general is full of enormous pitfalls and eccentricities, like 50mb limits for some browsers or just completely random total deletion of all app state at the browser's whim.
    - alooPotato 6y ago
      Seems like they are making a lot of progress on that front: https://web.dev/file-system-access/ https://web.dev/file-system-access/
      - Solid_Applaud 6y ago
        Fine, but these are proposals. We want something we can work with today, something that we have the power to hack on that will expose new systems we come up with to HTML/JS, and that is the niche that Electron-like systems fill really well.
        alooPotato 6y ago

pupdogg 6y ago

Whenever I'm reminded of Electron, I'm thankful to have experienced WinAmp!

sterlind 6y ago
ironic, because Electron apps should be easily skinnable. just put new CSS and images, maybe some new html, especially if there's some way of exposing e.g. the UI components so you can alter the layout and such.
- Ashanmaril 6y ago
  I used to use an Electron wrapper for Google Play Music (may it rest in peace) and the developer of that did this. The default colour scheme for that product was a harsh orange, but the Electron client allowed you to override the CSS to change that base color, as well as switch between light/dark mode.

mch82 6y ago

> Today, Tauri uses Rust for the backend - but in the not too distant future, other backends like Go, Nim, Python, Csharp etc. will be possible. This is because we are maintaining the official Rust bindings to the webview organisation and plan to let you switch out the backend for your needs. Since our API can be implemented in any language with C interop, full compliance is only a PR away. Sounds promising. I’d love a web view front end for Python as an alternative to tkinter.

swagonomixxx 6y ago

This kind of makes me think... is there room for a much more stripped down version of Chromium that is suitable for lower memory footprint? Or is this impossible? It looks like Tauri uses system webviews, which use a lot less memory, but the burden is then on the developer to make sure that they build essentially 3 (maybe more) UI's on platforms that might change under their feet. That's why the Electron approach is simpler - it trades of performance for uniformity of experience across the major platforms. But I'm wondering if it really has to be this way. Do modern browsers really need 2G of RAM in order to send and receive messages in a chat box (looking at you, Slack).

munificent 6y ago
> is there room for a much more stripped down version of Chromium that is suitable for lower memory footprint? That's basically the history of Flutter. The initial goal was something like "Web: The Good Parts" and the results of that experiment led them to where they are now.
- ducktective 6y ago
  I mean, where are they now? Promising or DoA? I fear touching it because of it being a Google project (killedbygoogle.com)
  - chgibb 6y ago
    We're pretty bought into Flutter. No cross platform toolkit is perfect but Flutter is miles ahead of everything else. For a not very scientific analysis: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=flutter,%2Fg%2F11h03gfxy9,xamarin https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...
    - nwienert 6y ago
      It’s definitely not miles ahead of just about anything. It has significant tradeoffs and fits some projects better than others. React Native has quite a few benefits over Flutter. Especially if building for the web, I’d actually say Flutter is only usable now if you don’t build your web app with it. Which in my cost benefit analysis makes it miles behind RN, but of course, that’s why it depends.

grishka 6y ago

I only have one question. Was the name inspired by Stargate?

soylentcola 6y ago
That's what I was wondering. I've watched a decent amount of it but my GF is the biggest fan I've ever met (so, naturally, that's what stuck out when I saw the article).
maxk42 6y ago
It's either that or a reference to the Tauri civilization that dwindled some 3,000 years ago in the Crimean peninsula. I'm leaning toward the former.
pspeter3 6y ago
This was my first thought as well.
nklayman 6y ago
It's actually inspired by the star system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Tauri_star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Tauri_star).
BrianOnHN 6y ago
I scrolled just for this.

pjmlp 6y ago

Without wanting to attack Tauri's author work in any way, for me, the only sensible alternative to Electron are native webviews and daemons/services talking to the user's installed browsers.

dmix 6y ago
Isn’t that what this is basically?
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Is it? I couldn't find it.
  - tene 6y ago
    https://tauri.studio/en/docs/getting-started/technical-details https://tauri.studio/en/docs/getting-started/technical-detai... "The first generation user interface in Tauri apps leverages Cocoa/WebKit on macOS, gtk-webkit2 on Linux and Webkit via EdgeHTML / Chakra on Windows. Tauri leverages the MIT licensed work known as webview that has been incorporated into the officiall webview_rust bindings."
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Thanks, I stand corrected.
  - dmix 6y ago
    Definitely needs a better homepage, one better targeted at developers, which so many fail to do.
- tedunangst 6y ago
  So if I install a Tauri app I can access it with Firefox?

dmix 6y ago

Just a note to the marketing site developer I wasn’t familiar with the “Brownfield” term and that was the first one listed. For others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownfield_(software_development) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownfield_(software_developme... Also the first comment by brunsolf might be worth considering as the first description.

sam0x17 6y ago

This is huge. I've been waiting for the equivalent of this to emerge in the crystal lang ecosystem for years (gotta get them to finish windows support first). I might dust off Rust again just because this exists.

math0ne 6y ago

I love this feature roadmap!

CivBase 6y ago

From the roadmap: > Go, Nim, Python, C++ and other bindings are possible with the stable API. I think something like this might actually have a lot of potential, specifically because it's much easier to create bindings for other languages with Rust than with JavaScript. You're stuck with a NodeJS runtime to run an Electron app, even if you "compile" it. You could theoretically make bindings to another language, but you'd still be dependent on that NodeJS runtime. But this could theoretically be compiled to a relatively lightweight DLL and interfaced with using practically any language you want. The page logic would still need to be JavaScript, of course, but that's just the nature of webviews for now.

shomyo 6y ago

'Written in Rust' is a new 'I use Arch, btw'.

jmaygarden 6y ago

I started to build some internal tools (that utilize Rust libraries to interface with hardware) using Tauri last year. That effort ended after trying to cross-compile to aarch64 and hitting a ton of roadblocks. It looks like it is still an open issue. So, Raspberry Pi, for example, is not supported. https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri/issues/941 https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri/issues/941

filereaper 6y ago

Will this at some point make Electron apps like Slack/VSCode less hungry and more resource efficient? My cpu fans spin up everytime Slack is open.

qudat 6y ago
This never happens to me. I run slack in my browser as just another tab.

IceWreck 6y ago

On the go side, there is Wails (https://wails.app/ https://wails.app/) which is pretty popular

k__ 6y ago

Doesn't seem like a big improvement when they still use web tech. I'm all for web tech, but that's what makes Electron no better than a browser. Revery seems like a much better solution.

OJFord 6y ago

Huh, funny seeing this here, started using it just a week or so ago, really like it so far. I'm writing my frontend in JavaScript with Svelte, and able to make impressively smooth RPCs to the Rust backend with Tauri's API. Really nice work. Edit: actually that's something quite important to add perhaps that the headline doesn't make completely clear - it's not merely 'written in' Rust, but like Electron gives you Rust (resp. Node) to use.

thereddaikon 6y ago

Can we just stop using browsers as a framework for desktop applications? That's not what they are meant for. Electron and everything like it is the ultimate expression of developer laziness.

Nagyman 6y ago
Can we stop attributing technology choices to laziness? Sounds like a _lazy_ evaluation and presumption of someone else's motivations. More seriously, there are far more folks familiar with browser frontend technologies than the myriad of desktop frameworks, rife with their own challenges.
qudat 6y ago
There's a reason why no one wants to build a desktop app using Qt and it's not laziness.

pookeh 6y ago

Why doesn't Electron debundle itself into the Runtime vs Application? Much like .Net Runtime. Electron can then be installed in a single spot in the system and all Electron apps pick it up from that spot. You can install bundle the Electron Runtime in the installer (200mb installer is no biggie for a desktop app) but you get all the benefits of consolidating RAM usage across.

spijdar 6y ago
Well, the .Net runtime isn't exactly the most successful story from an end user perspective, where you occasionally run into weird problems with mismatched runtimes or missing runtimes or similar. Granted, it's not that often, but it feels like a lot of apps relying on it just ship their own copies of the runtime. Still saves resources if multiple apps use the same runtime version, but...
- neeleshs 6y ago
  If the installer could do this instead.. Check if the app is supported by an existing runtime, if not download it and make it available globally, otherwise use the current runtime and download only the app
edflsafoiewq 6y ago
It already is. For example, on Arch Linux, Electron is packaged as a separate binary and the eg. VS Code binary is just a shell script that points electron to the right entrypoint #!/bin/bash ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE=1 exec electron9 /usr/lib/code/out/cli.js /usr/lib/code/code.js "$@" But most Electron apps prefer to bundle the whole runtime with their app.
ziftface 6y ago
That's an interesting point, especially since V8 is already used for running multiple applications that need to be sandboxed from each other. It would probably be a big effort though, and to get any real benefit from it, applications would actually have to start switching to a different fork of electron. But I often have multiple electron applications running at once so this would be pretty nice.

f-word 6y ago

Does this let me bundle signed snapshots so random miscreants can't tamper with my app? I couldn't find it, and it's the one thing I'm desperately looking for in this kind of platforms

taejavu 6y ago

Is it easier to test than electron? Cypress doesn’t support electron and that makes me sad

keskadale 6y ago

Question: Why do we need Electron alternatives? Why do we need to develop applications that need a bundled browser to run? Why can't we just use GTK/Qt?

y2bd 6y ago
The two main reasons I’ve always heard against QT in particular are 1. Non C++ devs don’t want to write C++/participate in the C++ ecosystem at all. While there are plenty of QT binding libraries for other languages, they seem to be of varying and unpredictable quality. 2. QT has potentially difficult licensing: https://www.qt.io/licensing/ https://www.qt.io/licensing/ Disclaimer: I’ve never used QT.
- hannofcart 6y ago
  Their licensing is written horribly, to just FUD companies into buying their commercial license. However, the library components offered under LGPL3 are all you need to ship a perfectly good desktop app. The GPL3 licensed stuff listed in the comparison chart on the page you linked are typically the utility applications like Qt Designer which you won't need to ship with your application anyway. It's unfortunate how the company backing Qt is going about this. But it's a great framework overall. (At my last firm, we shipped several apps via Qt and it's always been a joy to use.)
ketzo 6y ago
There is a lot of effort currently being put into creating web applications. It would be nice if we could use the fruits of that labor on desktop and mobile applications. That's how I understand it, anyway.
- eivarv 6y ago
  It would also be nice if people understood and really appreciated the trade-offs of doing so – i.e. hogging resources, killing batteries, potentially wrecking the end users' experience and ability to multitask efficiently, etc.
6y ago

yannoninator 6y ago

I think the desktop seriously needs a production, RAM and developer friendly breakthrough that isn't Electron. Tauri may be it, but the desktop SO needs this moment, I don't want to see 50 years on and Electron is still being used.

calibas 6y ago
There's React Native for Windows/macOS, though if you don't like Electron I doubt that's very appealing either. I've had some nice experiences using PyInstaller to create desktop apps.
- ianlevesque 6y ago
  React Native is fantastic as a user on macOS and Windows. Personally I think if there’s any hope of winning the Electron crowd over that’s it. I like to develop with stronger typed languages than JS, but there's clearly demand given electron’s popularity.
  - calibas 6y ago
    I started getting in the habit of using Typescript with JS. It's annoying at first, but worth it for any decent sized codebase. All the bugs from JavaScript's unexpected type conversions just disappear.
- scarlac 6y ago
  Depends on why OP doesn't like Electron. To be clear to everyone: Electron and React Native are not alike. Electron is a big web browser. React Native work completely differently: It neither renders, computes, or runs the same. React Native uses the Hermes engine, puppeteering native components.
eivarv 6y ago
For the GUI-parts (and more) there's always wxWidgets and Qt, at least.
- 6y ago

Const-me 6y ago

If someone paid me to do something similar, I would probably be building on top of this: https://github.com/Const-me/Vrmac https://github.com/Const-me/Vrmac There’re two hard problems there. One is how to render vector graphics and fonts. So far, only web browsers do that in a cross-platform way. Windows has it’s Direct2D and DirectWrite, while Linux has nothing comparable, unfortunately. Another higher level one is how to build easy to use GUI library on top of that. Have not approached that one. I have a few ideas but did nothing so far to address them, lately I’m too busy with other projects.

eivarv 6y ago
Why not just wrap/abstract the native platform APIs (like what wxWidgets does)?
- Const-me 6y ago
  These native platform APIs don’t use GPU much, or at all. That’s true even on Windows where GPU support is better than anywhere else. wxWidgets wraps Win32 stuff, it does not use WPF (backed by DirectX 9.0c) nor UWP (backed by Direct3D 11+, Direct2D, and DirectWrite). Count of pixels in displays was improving way faster than RAM bandwidth or CPU performance. Currently, this does not matter much on desktops, matters somewhat on laptops, and critically important for many mobile and embedded platforms. When you want to render anything at all at native display resolution and refresh rate, GPU stuff is the only option that works well enough.

Sephr 6y ago

I'd rather have development resumed on Carlo. You can re-use the existing Chrome install on a user's device without having to rely on a system-provided WebView.

CivBase 6y ago
What if I don't have Chrome installed?
- Sephr 6y ago
  Then Carlo could auto-install it, and it wouldn't have to be a unique installation just for one app.

worik 6y ago

"The core is built with Rust and the CLI leverages Node.js" Sublime to the gorblimy in one sentence!

themihai 6y ago

I think a better electron would be an Electron that you can build only with the features you use(i.e I don't use websql, I don't need CORS, web notifications, nfc, bluetooth, hundreds of legacy js and css features, no pdf/print support etc). I'm pretty sure that if you can drop all the stuff you don't use you get better performance/efficiency.

ianlevesque 6y ago
It goes deeper than that. Frickin’ Spotify has a manual toggle for whether or not I want Hardware Acceleration turned on or not. It’s not the only one. I don’t have any way to know which setting doesn’t spin up my laptop fans and burn me. How about just building your app in such a way that I don’t have to manually configure that. We’ve had music players since the 90’s, I don’t see why this is so hard.

hit8run 6y ago

I shipped a Mac app to the App Store using native web views via macgap in 2013 :) Idea is not new but still better than electron up until today.

pi_el_59 6y ago

i've also heard of this alternative https://www.outrunlabs.com/revery/ https://www.outrunlabs.com/revery/

pwdisswordfish0 6y ago

What part does node.js play in this?

exacube 6y ago

Does using the underlying platform's webview make things faster? What are the benefits to end users?

dguaraglia 6y ago
It'll make applications smaller by not having to bundle a full copy of Chromium for each application. It may make applications slightly faster if the webview is already loaded in memory, and it'll probably save some RAM because applications would share some memory.

soheil 6y ago

Why can't there be a docker-like Electron running a base version of Chromium with additional layers for other versions support for different apps on top of it? This would both save more resources and lower each app's bundle size significantly.

jszymborski 6y ago

I just love that they have different "patterns", which truly makes this a flexible platform. I'm personally a big fan of the "Lockdown" [0] pattern, which avoids spinning up a local server and has a far more conservative security model. [0] https://tauri.studio/en/docs/usage/patterns/lockdown https://tauri.studio/en/docs/usage/patterns/lockdown

c-smile 6y ago

In what sense it is an alternative to ElectronJS? If size than not that much as Tauri is based on Node.JS that is 56 Mb executable by itself. Yet Node.JS is pure C/C++ code. It is not clear what does "written in Rust" mean at all and what benefits Rust provides in that setup. For the comparison: my scapp.js.exe ( https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-js-sdk#demos https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-js-sdk#demos ) that is Sciter.JS packaged as standalone exe without dependencies is of size 5.3mb - at least 10 times less than Node.JS, Tauri and ElectronJS. That exe includes HTML/CSS, QuickJS (ES2020) engines and essential portions of Node.JS runtime: https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-js-sdk/blob/main/docs/md/module-sys.md https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-js-sdk/blob/main/docs/md/m... So is the question above, alternative in what sense?

datagram 6y ago
Tauri apps don't use the NodeJS runtime. You have to write your app's backend in Rust. Like you said, the NodeJS runtime is tens of MB; if you look at their demo app you'll see that it doesn't even break 3MB.
hojjat12000 6y ago
If you look at the website you will see that it is not bundling Node.js, apps can be as small as less than 1mb. It is written in rust (because the backend is, also it will integrate with Deno in future which in Rust). It is still in development, but if you look at the website you will see the features that it provides or will provide (such as system integration) and the value that it adds.

davej 6y ago

I've been following this project for a while, it's super exciting. Unfortunately, progress seems to have slowed somewhat in the last 6 months. Loading Node in the renderer is a broken pattern that is full of compatibility issues and security vulnerabilities. Electron have come to realise this too and seem to be pushing towards ContextIsolation and explicitly defined bridges between the "backend" node process and the renderer.

galaxyLogic 6y ago

Reading all these comments about WebView compatibility issues makes me wonder why not just do Progressive Web Apps"? For the server the OS doesn't matter, and for the browser compatibility issues just deal with them like any web-app would. What is wrong with separate client and server?

niels_bom 6y ago
Isn’t there a lot more work to do around local IO and permissions with PWAs?
- galaxyLogic 6y ago
  Not sure but why would there be? A server is a server whether it runs in the same machine or somewhere else. But for development purposes yes there is the complication of having to acquire and install a certificate to your server which your browser will trust without questions. So yes, that is (at least) one factor making PWA development more cumbersome than it should be.

JanSt 6y ago

does it support the bluetooth web api?

jokoon 6y ago

I can't help to remind everyone to watch The Birth and Death of Javascript: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death... Cousins of electrons and their RAM requirements are a steep reminder that the DOM is cancerous and will have to evolve and suffer from deprecation. Or maybe introduce metrics and good performance practices?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jjjeii3 6y ago

Blazor can now also be used to write cross-platform desktop applications with C# similar to Electron: https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2021/02/17/net-6-preview-1.aspx https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2021/02/17/net-6-p... C# will then be compiled to WebAssembly.

antihero 6y ago

Wouldn't a better solution to be use something like https://github.com/microsoft/react-native-macos https://github.com/microsoft/react-native-macos ?

Chyzwar 6y ago

I just tried and integrating with create-react-app was an breeze. I would consider that as an alternative for electron.

bobblywobbles 6y ago

I appreciate the desire to move towards a lower memory footprint, but it seems they are still many months behind the Electron team and what they are doing. I am a bit bias, I am the author of a security-focused Electron template.