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Tauri: An Electron alternative written in Rust

tauri.studio

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Re: Tauri: An Electron alternative written in Rust

#21

Post by flixic »

hu3 wrote: post #20
brundolf wrote: post #12

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-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 d…

> I kind of wonder why it took this long for someone to try this approach. Perhaps a similar approach to https://github.com/webview/webview ? "Tiny cross-platform webview library for C/C++/Golang. Uses WebKit (Gtk/Cocoa) and Edge (Windows)"

Yes, Tauri's documentation explicitly states that it uses this Webview project.

Re: Tauri: An Electron alternative written in Rust

#22

Post by dsizzle »

brundolf wrote: post #12

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-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 d…

Revery is another similar project that is trying to be a lightweight alternative to Electron https://github.com/revery-ui/revery

Re: Tauri: An Electron alternative written in Rust

#23

Post by vlovich123 »

brundolf wrote: post #12

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-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 d…

Well Windows is basically Chrome so your diversity will basically be Chrome & WebKit which is what you have anyway. And having all the fun of web development against multiple browsers with all the headaches of desktop distribution is kind of the worst of all worlds. It'll be interesting to see if this approach finds success (since it may cut down on the size of your binary) but it could easily get abandoned if any significant projects start using this as frontend devs create pressure to simplify the stack across platforms.

On Linux it's going to pull in GTK which means a not great experience on KDE (even though KDE does have WebKit hooks like GTK does).

Re: Tauri: An Electron alternative written in Rust

#24

Post by Tuna-Fish »

hobofan wrote: post #14

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.

> 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.

Re: Tauri: An Electron alternative written in Rust

#25

Post by dsizzle »

andai wrote: post #18
brundolf wrote: post #12

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-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 d…

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.

Revery? https://github.com/revery-ui/revery

Re: Tauri: An Electron alternative written in Rust

#28

Post by hu3 »

flixic wrote: post #21
hu3 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I kind of wonder why it took this long for someone to try this approach. Perhaps a similar approach to https://github.com/webview/webview ? "Tiny cross-platform webview library for C/C++/Golang. Uses WebKit (Gtk/Cocoa) and Edge (Windows)"

Yes, Tauri's documentation explicitly states that it uses this Webview project.

That's great in the sense that the more solutions using that library, the more mature it gets.

Re: Tauri: An Electron alternative written in Rust

#29

Post by the_duke »

brundolf wrote: post #12

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-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 d…

A major benefit of Electron is that you can develop against a single browser and runtime version and don't have to deal with all the small but time consuming compatibility quirks.

On Windows the default webview engine is still not the new Chromium but old Edge (WebView2 has to be installed separately), Safari has a fair amount of issues and gtk-webkit can be very quirky as well.

This is not so significant if your app has a web version and you have to deal with it anyway , but thereare a fair amount of Electron only apps. Or even with a web version, the desktop app often has special features not present on the web.

But webviews are as much a moving target as browsers and often behave differently from the regular browser version in a myriad of ways, so you need an even bigger testing matrix.

Webviews are also hard to properly secure and don't provide the extensive APIs of Electron, which you often have to bake yourself in a wrapper written in, eg, Rust or C++.

I say all this as someone who hates how resource hungry Electron apps are and groans each time about yet another one on my machine, but I understand why it is so popular.

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