Flutter desktop? Anyone tried it?
Yes, it's excellent.
Tauri vs. Electron – Real world application
31–40 of 107 posts
Re: Tauri vs. Electron – Real world application
#32The 5th point in this article is what makes me end up using Electron most of the time. As much as I love Tauri (and Wails), WebView requires to make sure the application renders exactly the same across all platforms. Sure, Electron comes with its downsides like the article rightfully points out. But having a UI that renders and behaves exactly the same on all platforms (thanks to the version locked Chromium bundled i…
If you only provide a desktop app yes.
If you also provide a web app, then the work needs to be done anyway.
Re: Tauri vs. Electron – Real world application
#33> You have to rewrite your app's backend in Rust Tauri has "Other Bindings" on the roadmap, but, for now, this requirement is big limitation. imo, the article should have lead with that instead of burying it at #4.
It's only a limitation if your app is currently written in Javascript, which seems like a silly assumption. If your app is currently written in Rust, Electron has the equally big downside of "you have to rewrite your app's backend in Javascript"
Re: Tauri vs. Electron – Real world application
#34> You have to rewrite your app's backend in Rust Tauri has "Other Bindings" on the roadmap, but, for now, this requirement is big limitation. imo, the article should have lead with that instead of burying it at #4.
It's only a limitation if your app is currently written in Javascript, which seems like a silly assumption. If your app is currently written in Rust, Electron has the equally big downside of "you have to rewrite your app's backend in Javascript"
My impression is that Electron can wrap whatever backend you want to use. Is that not the case?
Re: Tauri vs. Electron – Real world application
#35> And if your user has the correct runtime for the webview used by Tauri you can just send them a single executable So does this mean all these comparisons are between a web bundle that runs on an existing VM, and a web bundledthat came packaged with a VM? Because I thought the whole point of Electron was that all the dependencies came packaged together, even if that adds 100 megs to the install.
disclaimer: contributor to Tauri
This ends up often being my main contention with Rust, when making useful programs it often leads to large compile times mostly due to the linker. The mold linker can help greatly, but it's still not a great developer experience. Something I want to create in the future is a fully compiled Tauri application except it takes the webview sources at runtime, allowing a fast-as-possible development reload as long as you are only touching the frontend application and not the Rust side. On the Rust side there are a few options, one of them being developing something like WASM plugins on the backend where their individual dependencies are much less than a full application.
Re: Tauri vs. Electron – Real world application
#36Those RAM usage comparisons should consider the shared memory among those processes. Aren't those renderer and zygote processes forks of each other?
I don't think that tools like htop or Process Explorer give us an easy at-a-glance answer to how much RAM multi-process browsers or Electron apps need. My current approach is to monitor the currently free RAM while at the same time closing the entire application. That delta at that moment is a more accurate representation of the app's memory consumption than summing up RSS values or working sets.
Re: Tauri vs. Electron – Real world application
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's only a limitation if your app is currently written in Javascript, which seems like a silly assumption. If your app is currently written in Rust, Electron has the equally big downside of "you have to rewrite your app's backend in Javascript"
My impression is that Electron can wrap whatever backend you want to use. Is that not the case?
You could spawn any local server from Node and talk to it from the web side.
Re: Tauri vs. Electron – Real world application
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's only a limitation if your app is currently written in Javascript, which seems like a silly assumption. If your app is currently written in Rust, Electron has the equally big downside of "you have to rewrite your app's backend in Javascript"
My impression is that Electron can wrap whatever backend you want to use. Is that not the case?
I've embedded a rust logic core into electron, so yes, anything that can expose a C API can be loaded into electron.
That said, after playing around with Tauri a bit I have to say it makes it magnitudes easier to embed rust. So if your target is rust, it's a much nicer option.
Re: Tauri vs. Electron – Real world application
#39Flutter desktop? Anyone tried it?
I've evaluated both Tauri and Flutter + flutter_rust_bridge.
I immediately felt really productive in Tauri/Svelte/rust. It just kind of clicked with me (completely new to Svelte, but been doing SPAs and JS desktop apps for some time as well as being in the rust scene for years). It was like the ease of electron, but with a better build framework for bundling rust. Really a good setup, easy to get into, easy and fast to build in.
I think Flutter is a really great UI framework. The way it's set up really makes sense and makes it fairly easy to structure the UI. That said, I really do not like Dart at all. I found it difficult to learn a new language and a new UI framework at the same time, and found myself pining for HTML/javascript again. flutter_rust_bridge obviously alleviated this a bit because it made it possible to move most of the logic into rust. I am honestly also worried about Flutter being a Google project. They tend to abandon projects quite a bit. I do like the promises of Flutter and didn't actually have any material issues with it. I think I might give it another go on the next app I build and see if I can get over the Dart hump.
Re: Tauri vs. Electron – Real world application
#40The 5th point in this article is what makes me end up using Electron most of the time. As much as I love Tauri (and Wails), WebView requires to make sure the application renders exactly the same across all platforms. Sure, Electron comes with its downsides like the article rightfully points out. But having a UI that renders and behaves exactly the same on all platforms (thanks to the version locked Chromium bundled i…
Is that really such a big deal?
Browser engines these days aren't so bad, especially if all you need from them is basic CSS for the UI. You still have a fully-fledged native language underneath it, so you're not limited to what Web APIs can do.