Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app • Hacker News Board

ch4s3 wrote: post #12

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #3

Is it by any chance an Electron app?

It uses an erlang binding for wxWidgets[1]. [1] https://www.wxwidgets.org/

What for? The Livebook interface is built with Phoenix Liveview.

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#15

Post by ch4s3 » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 5:52 PM UTC

lvass wrote: post #14

ch4s3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It uses an erlang binding for wxWidgets[1]. [1] https://www.wxwidgets.org/

What for? The Livebook interface is built with Phoenix Liveview.

The window it runs in.

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#16

Post by lvass » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

I love the concept of local Web servers as GUI substitutes, and hope we get many more of those. Tachidesk is my favorite example. Thanks to Phoenix Liveview, Elixir is becoming a great option in this space. This method gives us every benefit of Electron and almost none of the downsides.

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#17

Post by freedomben » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 6:01 PM UTC

No Linux download :-(

Nevertheless it's fairly easy to install[1]. If you have docker, you can just run the image to try it out:

     docker run -p 8080:8080 -p 8081:8081 --pull always livebook/livebook

You may want to configure some things, so check out the options[2].:

If you want a "native" install, after you have elixir installed you can use

     mix escript.install hex livebook

and start it with

     livebook server

Check out the readme for more configuration options[1]

[1]: https://github.com/livebook-dev/livebook#installation

[2]: https://github.com/livebook-dev/livebook#docker

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#18

Post by codeptualize » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

This is awesome! Starting it up from the terminal and going to the url was not super convenient for quick tasks and scripts, this is much better.

Edit: one thing that would make it even nicer is if it would remember the folder and/or recently opened notebooks.

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#19

Post by xcambar » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

The Elixir ecosystem is growing incredibly well. I am impressed both from an engineering and a product perspective.

It shows that they are playing the long game.

I think they are achieving what I wished happen to the Clojure ecosystem: productive, well designed, respected and popular. Clojure missed the last step, unfortunately.

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#20

Post by dmix » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 6:04 PM UTC

spiderice wrote: post #10

lytedev wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Livebook is a web app, I would assume so.

I just installed it and it actually doesn't use Electron. It's basically just a local web server that runs on your computer, and opens a browser tab in your default browser pointing to http://localhost:60904/

On macOS this is a great app for turning browser web apps like these into dedicated 'apps':

https://www.bzgapps.com/unite

I use it with YNAB