Looks like a thin wrapper around Tauri. The README doesn't do a good job at explaining why one should use this over Tauri itself.

From what I understand, this project attempts to implement a subset of the Electron API so that the library can act as a "drop-in replacement" for simple enough Electron apps. If this understanding is correct, then I think Electrico has the potential to significantly boost adoption of Tauri.

For those who don't know: Tauri is a collection of Rust libraries that allow using an operating system's "native web view" (WRY) and a Rust backend for the process backing a web view (there is an IPC layer between JS and Rust). The overall result is that, on Mac OS and Windows, one can distribute native executables without needing to bundle either Node.js or Chromium. There is no startup cost of loading Node.js, since a native Rust binary is used. As for the web view itself, startup tends to be faster than Chromium, since the libraries for e.g. WebKit are usually pre-loaded by the OS itself. Tauri apps have near-instant startup time, and I've found it to be a joy to use. The only downside is that the backend must be written in Rust. Electrico seems to help soften the learning curve by providing JavaScript APIs mirroring that of Electron.

Overall, nice project.

Is it possible to have some kind of electron/tauri/,.. based runtime, but without the actual app? The users would need to install this runtime only once. The apps would need to be installed separately. The apps could be just the plain html/js/css/assets maybe packed within a zip, with a dedicated extension. The runtime would take care of the installation. That way the devs could develop with their FE-stack of their choice and ship just the small packages. Does this make sense?

Those projects in general have Alot of problem, AND this is a wrapper on top of them.

>Wry also needs WebKitGTK for WebView.

WebKit have a lot more security problems and compatibility issues and are not as updated as chromium based, electron.

There's nothing wrong about chromium based engines like electron. They are just a little bigger for download a little slow to start but that's it. If your code is well developed they are fast and snappy. Discord is one good example also vscode

I like this, as the author of LRCGET (which is made with Tauri), I hate debugging something that works on Windows (Microsoft Edge WebView2) but doesn't work well or doesn't work at all on Linux (Webkit2gtk) or macOS.

One of the example is audio playback. Chromium and in turn Edge WebView2 have great support, but make it work in Webkit2gtk is a big pain in the *s. I then decided to switch the audio playback feature to Rust side (using Kira and Symphonia) instead.

Having Chromium bundled eliminates all the pain about inconsistency between webview engines, and using Rust means we don't have to pay for the NodeJS size in our app bundle (plus better performance).

For Tauri, I think something like Servo will fit well as bundled browser engine. Hopefully some day it will happen.

> cross platform for linux, macos, linux, ios and android

I like how Linux is so important it gets two mentions, but Windows is left out. Presumably that's a typo though?

I’ve been using Electrobun lately which is (Bun + System Webview) and it’s been great.

Only supports ARM Mac at the moment but windows and linux support coming soon.

https://www.electrobun.dev

Missed a great opportunity to call it Electron Neutrino (Neutrino for short)

This should be merged into tauri, like how bun also supports nodejs api

I’m honestly just waiting for someone to add Rust bindings for Electron (instead of gluing Node to C++ in the main process, and using WASM for the renderer process instead).

Someone may ask why - simply to have options. Tauri is great but there are many users complaining (with justification) that relying on the platform webview sucks, especially on Linux.

In general, there’s no reason Electron can only have a Node API.

Is it compatible with Deno? Nice project.

I still don’t understand why we’re using any of these Electron-style “apps.”

Ship a web application, or write actual native apps. Electron and that flavor of “app” development is the worst of all worlds.

Just like the JavaScript web frameworks have turned what should be small web applications into huge monsters — Electron has made what should be relatively small, high performance applications into these bloated resource hogs.

I get it, JavaScript developers want to be part of the fun and there is definitely a use case for tiny resource-constrained startups still changing product-market fit. But companies like Slack for instance — worth billions of dollars and can’t find a way to write a high performance desktop app in Swift for MacOS instead opting for Electron.

Think of the climate! All that extra power required to run these resource hog Electron apps on tens of millions of computers isn’t trivial, not to mention a neutered user experience that results from not taking advantage of actual native applications.

JavaScript isn’t the panacea people want it to be.

Electron makes it easy for companies but it makes it rougher for the victims.

And Tauri and all the others are simply different flavors of the same shit sandwich.